^m{,2 



Engflish Atrocities in 
Ireland 



A Compilation of Facts from Court 
and Press Records 



By 



KATHERINE HUGHES 



WITH A FOREWORD BY HON. JAMES D. PHELAN 



George Washington's adopted son, George Washington Parke Custis, 
speaking at the City Hall, Washington, on July 20, 1826, stated: 

"When you felt the full force of the Lion's merciless fangs, who first 
gave you aid, not of words, but of deeds? 

". . . And with such revelations as these, can you, will you, dare 
you, Americans, talk of interference, and withhold your voice from a 
general acclaim, which would thunder in this land till its echoes reach 
the Emerald Isle, in a prayer for Ireland's deliverance? If there is an 
American who does not feel for the wrongs of that country which so 
nobly contributed to the establishment of our rights, I pronounce 
him recreant to the feelings of virtue, honor and gratitude. 

"And my country's self, if she decline to give onJy her poor opinions 
of the miseries oi those who gave their toil and blood that she might 
be great, free and happy — when misfortunes next assail her, may she 
not find the friend she once found in Ireland. . . . 

"But let not Ireland despair. . . . My country's friend in my coun- 
try's utmost need. May she soon be relieved from the Lion's grasp, 
for the Lion fondles ere it kills." 



PRICE 10 CENTS 



Publisked by 

FRIENDS OF IRISH FREEDOM, Inc. 

280 Broadway, New York 



NOV 22 1920 






upon his arrival in America, Sir Auckland 
Geddes, the British Ambassador, speaking on be- 
half of the British Government, said (April 26, 
1920): 

''There is no quarrel between England and Ire- 
land. It takes two to make a quarrel, and this 
generation of Englishmen has steadily refused to 
quarrel with Ireland." 

In this compilation of Court and Press Records 
of England's military rule in Ireland, the public 
will find the reply to the British Ambassador, as 
in Custis' day — **the Lion fondles ere it kills." 



.,.Content£{.., 



1, over 22,000) 



I. Englishmen Condemn British Militarism in Ireland 
II, Englishmen Pay Tribute to Irish Republican Party . . . , 

III. Court and Press Records of 31,482 admitted British Military Out 
rages in Ireland, from May 1, 1916 to March 1, 1920 . . . . 

(a) Murders 

(6) Deportations . 

(c) Armed Assaults 

(d) Raids (By May 

(e) Arrests . 
(/) Sentences 

(g) Proclamations and Suppressions 
(h) Suppressions of Newspapers 
(*) Courts-Martial 

IV. Miscellaneous Outrages 
V. Crimes Attributed to Sinn Fein 

VI. 1916 and 1920 
VII. America's Interest in This 

1 



Page 
5 

8 



63 

2,162 

609 

19,423 

6,157 

2,107 

389 

53 

519 



10 
11 
14 
16 
20 
23 
30 
31 
33 
34 
36 
45 
54 
58 



FOREWORD 

I have followed closely the historj^ of EngHsh-Irish relations, and I have always be- 
lieved that a statement of ^f acts is more eloquent than the expression of opinion. 

The Irish, an ancient race, enjoyed a civilization and disseminated learning before the 
invasion by England. They resent in this enlightened age the denial of their liberty and 
the indignities and cruelties, which have been practised upon them. Ireland will only 
be peaceful when she is free; and the influence of the Irish throughout the world, unless 
freedom be granted, will be an implacable and disturbing element. The only permanent 
peace is a peace of justice. 

It can be proved out of the mouths of Englishmen that Ireland is a victim of injustice: 

James Bryce has said of past relations that "they saw Irish manufactures destroyed for 
the sake of English manufacturers, Irish revenue jobbed away . . . England did nothing 
for Ireland and suffered her to do nothing for herself. . . ." 

Goldwin Smith, an eminent English authority, said that during all Irish disturbances, 
ordinary crimes were very small and that political crime, so-called, was the answer made 
by an otherwise defenseless people against merciless coercion. He adds, "In plain truth, 
the secret tribunals which administered the Whiteboy code .were to the people the organs 
of a wild law of social morality." 

Edmund Burke at the time of the American Revolution, in defending the Colonies in 
the House of Commons, said, "I pardon something to the spirit of Liberty," and Lord 
Chatham said that if he were an American as he was an Englishman, while British troops 
remained in his country, never would he lay down his arms. 

The Irish are actuated by the spirit of Liberty, and they have won the applause of the 
-world because they are resolved never to lay down their arms. 

I trust the educational value of this little book will serve to create a public opinion to 
which even England will some day have to yield. It would be wise for her to do so now 
in the interest of English security and world peace. 

America has saved England in the late War from utter annihilation, and the voice of 
America ought to be potent in her councils. The Senate and the House of Representatives 
of the United States have truly expressed, I believe, American public opinion. 

James D. Phelan. 



ENGLISH ATROCITIES IN IRELAND. 



I. 

ENGLISHMEN CONDEMN BRITISH MILITARISM IN IRELAND. 

The President of the Irish Repubhc to-day— as Washington once was on behalf of 
America — is wont to point out to his American audiences that there is in Ireland now a 
Government of the people, constitutionally framed and' elected by the ballots of the Irish 
pepple in December, 1918. 

This is a Government of RIGHT. 

But in Ireland to-day there is also an alien government, based on might, maintained by 
an army of occupation and by extreme msasures of force imposed upon the Irish people. 

This is a Government of MIGHT. 

Yet this question is being asked all over America to-day: 

"Isn't Coercion a thing of the Past? . . . Why do Ireland's sympathizers 
claim England is making the Irish people suffer now?" 

Let Englishmen answer that question themselves: 

COERCION. 

"Ireland is governed under a system of coercion such as there has not been 
within living memory." Westminster Gazette, 16 December, 1919. 

IF IN AUSTRIA—! 

"Ireland is now being governed under military law. If what is now going 
on in Ireland had been going on in the Austrian Empire all England would be 
ringing with denunciation of the tyranny of the Hapsburgs and of denying people 
the right to rule themselves." 

Mr. Herbert Samuel, Ex-Cabinet Minister at St. Albans, December 8, 1919. 

DARKEST SPOT IN WORLD. 

"Lord French is at present Viceroy of Ireland, which is the darkest of the dark 
spots on the map, not of Great Britain, but of the world." 

Hon. Herbert Asquith, June 2, 1919. 

FATAL TO ENGLAND'S REPUTATION. 

"* * * In a word, every institution of which we as British citizens are so 
proud — a free press, freedom of speech, liberty of the subject and trial by jury — 
are things of thfe past in a large part of Ireland, and rule by military force, which we 
sought to destroy when resorted to by Germany, is an established fact in South 
and Southwest Ireland to-day. These facts are fatal to our reputation for na- 
tional good faith, and cannot fail to prejudice our national standing in the eyes of 
our self-governing Dominions and the Dependencies." 
Extract from the Report of the Commission of the British Parliamentary Labor Party 
which recently visited Ireland. 

DRASTIC REPRESSION. 

"Those who have followed the course of events in Ireland during the past 
few months cannot fail to note the steady development with which the Execu- 
tive have had recourse to drastic measures of repression." 

London Times, 17th December, 1919. 

OFFICIAL PROVOCATION. 

"Everybody knows that Ireland is a singularly crimeless country in the ordi- 
nary sense. Is it a matter for surprise that step by step with every piece of re- 
pression there has been a new outburst of disorder? Of course there is. The 



figures of arrests that I have collected from the newspapers are roughly as follows: 
— 1917, 719 arrests. The Right Hon. gentleman and associates say : — -'More armed 
force to keep them under,' result, 1918 — 2,600 arrests. More force, more tanks, 
more aeroplanes, more troops; result, 1919 — 7,600 arrests. Is it not perfectly 
obvious, if indeed we did not already know it a priori, that the policy pursued 
merely provokes the very disorder it professes to do away with?" 
C.\PT. Wedgwood Benn, M.P., in the English House of Commons, December 9th, 1919. 

"An oppressive and exasperating system of military rule." 

AsQuiTH at Paisley, January 30, 1920. 

A VICIOUS CIRCLE. 

'*The Government of Ireland has left no folly undone. It is alleged that 
Dublin Castle is deliberately fanning the embers of revolt. ... If the authori- 
ties had designed to provoke disorder, they would not have needed to act dif- 
ferently. Military repression always gives crime its opportunity, and crime 
makes sterner measures necessary. The circle must be broken somewhere " 

London Sunday Times, December 21st, 1919. 

FORTIFIED FORTS. 

"Nearly all the police barracks in Ireland are now fortified forts. Bai'bed 
wire entrenchments and sandbag barricades are dotted over the country; tanks 
and armored cars patrol their roads. Soldiers in full fighting kit are concen- 
trated in disturbed areas — and young Ireland is not dismayed." 

Londo7i Daily Mail, 11th December, 1919. 

THE NAKED SWORD. 

"Not since the black years that preceded the Union has Ireland been rule(i 
so nakedly by the sword or have the wielders of the sword encountered so fierce a 
resistance to their will." 

London Daily News, 12th December, 1919. 

"Dublin Castle is turning prosperous ploughshares into swords." 

Daily Mail, December 12th, 1919. 

BLUNT TRUTHS. 

"The most abominable outrage of all is Lord French's and Mr. Macpherson's 
outrage on human liberty." 

London Nation, January 20th, 1920. 

"The fact is, Castle Government in Ireland is infamous." 

Capt. W. Benn, English M.P., in Edinburgh Evening, Nezvs, 7th January, 1920. 

"The present government of Ireland by the sword." 

London Daily Nezvs, 3rd January, 1920. 

"There are as many soldiers to be seen any night in Dublin as in a British base 
like Calais, at the height of the War." 

Manchester Guardian, 31st December, 1919. 

MILITARISM TRIUMPHS. 

"Militarism is simply triumphant here." 

J. H. Thomas, M.P., during visit to Dublin, February 6th, 1920. 

TO BE RID OF SINN FEIN. 

"The present military domination of Ireland is no less hideous than was that 
of Belgium by the German Imperialists. Many Unionists in Ireland are long- 
ing for an opportunity which will allow the Government under cover of legality 
to shoot down the Sinn Feincrs wholesale, and so rid themselves of determined 
enemies without a break with America by ostensibly outraging all public moral- 
ity. Again and again I have heard such opinions expressed by influential men 
occupying important positions." 

Statement of a British Officer in August, 1919. 

6 



REPEAT SHERMAN'S MARCH. 

Edward Price Bell, an American correspondent in London, cabled to this country in 
December, 1919, that a distinguished Englishman told him "Sherman's march to the sea 
would be repeated in Ireland," if that country persisted in its defiance to English will. 

PLAYING FOR REBELLION. 

"It seems inconceivable that any responsible members of Parliament or poli- 
ticians would deliberately advocate the provocation of an outbreak in Ireland 
in the hope that Home Rule might thus be drowned in a sea of blood and repres- 
sion; but we fear there are some who would contemplate a rebellion in Ireland 
at this time with thoughtless equanimity." 

London Times, November 27, 1919. 

PROVOKING A RISING. 

Mr. W. N. Ewer, special correspondent of the Daily Herald, writing on February 9th, 
1920, from Dublin says:— 

"It is no mere surmise, but a known fact, based on authentic evidenc-., that 
there has been for some time past a group of officials which strongly advocates 
the provocation and bloody suppression of an armed rising." 

ENGLAND'S AIM IN TERRORISM. 

These statements have all been made within a year, not by Irishmen but by Britishers 
— men who are opposed to Sinn Fein and its gospel of Independence. 

They unanimously reveal a fear of sinister forces at work in the military occupation 
of Ireland at the present time. 

It was a similar use of tactics that decimated the Irish patriots of 1798, paved the way 
to the "Union" and threw back Ireland's struggle for freedom 120 years. 

WHY PROVOKE INSURRECTION? 

From the viewpoint of England's strategists in Dubhn Castle there has been one over- 
whelming reason why an Ireland that persisted to defy English Government must be 
brought out into the open, facing machine-guns unarmed — as the Zulus were and the 
Afghanistan peoples more recently. 

The reason was calmly stated by Lord French himself in an interview last January 
given to Mr. M. Marsillac of "Le Journal," Paris, when he complained that the root of 
the Irish question to-day was the fact that there were from 100,000 to 200,000 young 
men in the country who in normal times would have emigrated, and that there would be 
no peace in the country until these young men got out of it. * * * 

ENGLAND'S IDEAL— AN IRELAND WITHOUT IRISHMEN. 

"With armed forces at his disposal, as numerous as the forces with which Wel- 
lington overthrew Napoleon, the Viceroy has shown that he is wholly unalDle to 
maintain order in the political sense, though tanlcs and motor lorries are now 
the commonest sight on country roads, and Ireland is dragooned even more 
thoroughly than General von Bissing dragooned Belgium. While soldiers and 
police are rounding up representative citizens as political offenders, footpads 
can rob and harry with immunity, and every cross-Channel burglar and crook 
dreams of Ireland as miners dream of a new Klondyke. Lord French has pro- 
nounced the final condemnation of his own record in Ireland. Until that country, 
so he told a French journalist, has been depleted of 100,000 to 200,000 of its young 
men, there is no hope for the policy which he was selected to enforce at the point 
of the bayonet. This has always been the favorite specific of English rulers for 
Irish discontents, but few of them, since Cromwell, have admitted it as bluntly 
as Lord French. Their ideal is an Ireland without Irishmen, and when Irishmen 
have the temerity to object, their opposition is held to be conclusive proof of their 
criminality." 

Freeman's Journal, February 6th, 1920. 

"Lord French confides to a French journalist his scheme for the immediate 
compulsor}^ immigration of 180,000 more. Cromwell sent the young Irish to 
the Barbadoes. The militaiy government of to-day wants to revive Cromwel- 
lianism on a larger scale." * 

Ibid, January 31st, 1920. 



II. 

ENGLISHMEN PAY TRIBUTE TO IRISH REPUBLICANS. 

"What type of men are these upon whom England makes war in Ireland to-day; 
and of what nature the movement which she seeks tb crush — with martial law — 
with seizure of national banks and funds — prohibition and proclamations of all 
political and national societies — prohibition of the national language in public 
assemblies — kidnapping of leaders held for months in prison without charge or 
trial — arrests of thousands of men and women and deportation of other hundreds 
— with over 20,000 raids on private houses, searched while soldiery with fixed 
bayonets threaten and surround the startled inhabitants?" 

Again we shall seek for replies from Englishmen. 

The Irish Republic having been proclaimed by the Irish Volunteers and Labor Army 
of Ireland in 1916, was— on the dispersal of these groups — nursed through the most trying 
months of its infancy by the Sinn Fein political group. To their aid eventually all other 
groups of genuine Irish life rallied, and the name — Sinn Fein — is now indiscriminately 
applied to over four-fifths of the Irish people who stand to-day for an Irish Republic. 

SPEARHEAD OF IRELAND. 

"Sinn Fein is the most compact and the boldest expression in terms of politics 
of all the forces and influences that are helping on the regeneration of Ireland. 
It is the political spearhead * * * of Ireland," wrote Sydney Brooks, the 
English publicist in the Morning Post, after months of studying the New Ireland 
in 1907. 

"The tenacity of the Sinn Fein is the tenacity," he said, "not of obstinacy but 
of a cool, far-seeing and inflexible purpose." He described these pioneers of the 
Irish Republican movement as "clear-eyed, forceful men who mean business and 
have backbone" — a body of men with "bold, definite and sensible views on educa- 
tion, tillage, port dues, afforestation * * * an Irish Merchant Marine * * * " 
—men who are "strongly constructive." . . . 

THE WORK OF SINN FEIN. 

"Sinn Fein it is true, has not stopped at demands. It has set up its own Par- 
liament under the title of Dail Eireann, selected Cabinet Ministers and Heads of 
Departments, appointed ambassadors to act in its name at Washington and Paris, 
nominated Consuls some of whom are already at work in European countries, 
arranged to float a State Loan and established Arbitration Boards which through- 
out the greater part of Ireland are superseding British Courts of Law. The Castle 
meets each new development in the orthodox Castle way by proclamations, 
arrests and the Jedburgh justice of Military Courts." 

London Daily News, December 12, 1919. 

SINN FEIN SUPREME. 

"The Irish (English) Government has proclaimed Sinn Fein, but the order 
has had the effect of throwing water on lime. Sinn Fein instead of being sup- 
pressed, is supreme. Its Intelligence Department is so superior to that of DubHn 
Castle that every order made by the Irish (English) Government is anticipated , 
and eluded by the most obscure Sinn Fein Club in the most desolate region of 
Ireland." 

Dublin Correspondent, Daily Mail, December 9th, 1919. 

ITS HONESTY. 

"The Sinn Fein frame of mind is as open as a book to any one who can read. 
The leaders are absolutely uncompromising. In a sense this is the most honest 
movement of the kind the country has experienced. It says what it means and 
sticks to it." 

Morning Post's Special Correspondent, Dublin, December 17th, 1919. 



ITS INTELLECTUALISM. 

"Like it or not, we have all to admit that where you find an active intellectual 
centre in Ireland to-day, you have an active centre of Sinn Fein." 

London Times Special Correspondent, Dublin, December 18, 1919. 

ITS DISCIPLINE. 

"This Sinn Fein is mature, determined, national, disciplined and above all 
intelligent revolt." 

Daily Mail Special Correspondent, Dublin, December 15, 1919. 

ITS ORGANIZATION. 

"The Sinn Fein party has undoubtedly shown the greatest genius for organiza- 
tion." 

Special Correspondent, London Daily Mail, January 15, 1920. 

ITS DECISION. 

"No scheme of Home Riile short of Republican independence will, at the present 
moment, satisfy the mass of the Irish people." 

Earl of Meath, in London Times, January 13, 1920. 



III. 

COURT AND PRESS REPORTS OF ENGLISH ATROCITIES IN 

IRELAND. 

This vividly illustrates the fact which mocks modern claims to civilization; that while men quote laws 
of war which belligerent nations may not transgress, the world looks on while strong nations in times of "world- 
peace" harry and oppress weaker nations, without a voice being raised in the world's chancellories. 



In bald figures the acts of Military Terrorism committed by the armed forces of the 
EngHsh Government upon the people of Ireland are: — 

STATEMENT OF OUTRAGES BY YEARS. 



Murders 
Deportations 

Armed Assaults on Unarmed 
Citizens 
Raids on Private Houses, 

Burglaries, etc. 
Arrests 
Sentences 

Proclamations and Suppressions 
Suppression of Newspapers 
Courts Martial 

Total 5,585 719 2,G24 16,450 6,104 31,482 

Since March 1, 1920 this total of 31,482 has been enormously increased. During the 
present month, April, raids of houses have been numerous and groups of prisoners, fifty 
and more at a time, have been thrown into jail without charge or trial. 

These figures are necessarily incomplete, because (1) of informality with which many 
of the military outrages against the Irish were carried out, (2) the lack of court trials, 

(3) the suppression for long periods of the Press favorable to the Irish National Cause, 

(4) the rigid censorship on the Irish Press with regard to these outrages, and (5), the 
British official prohibition through a great portion of the period covered which forbade the 
publication of all outrages committed by England's forces in Ireland. 

A most sinister fact in this connection is that most of the men arrested in the opening 
months of 1920 were the more thoughtful older men — just such men as might be expected 
to urge restraint upon the younger men in case of extreme provocation from the British 
military. 



1916 


1917 


1918 


1919 


1920 


Total 


From May 








To 3/1 




38 


7 


6 


8 


4 


63 


1,949 


24 


91 


20 


78 


2,162 


* 


18 


81 


476 


34 


609 


* 


11 


260 


13,782 


5,370 


19,423 


3,226 


349 


1,107 


959 


516 


6,157 


160 


269 


973 


636 


69 


2,107 


ns ** 


2 


32*** 


335 


20 


389 


13 


3 


12 


25 


* *** 


53 


199 


36 


62 


209 


13 


519 



* No totals available. 
** Wholesale raids in addition. 
*** General Suppressions and Proclamations. 
**** 28 papers denied Foreign Circulation. 



10 



Ill— (a). 
MURDERS OF IRISH PATRIOTS— 63. 

"They shall be remembered for ever. 
They shall be alive for ever. 
They shall be speaking for ever, 
The people shall hear them for ever." 

They are not now "hanging men and women for the Wearin' o' the Green," for hanging 
presupposes a trial which British miUtarism prefers to evade, but they are shooting or 
strangling men in Ireland for wearing the Orange, White and Green. 

The policy of English military rule is one not only of coercion but of assassination for 
purposes of intimidation. It must be noted that Coroner's Juries in Ireland are selected 
rmd summoned by the military police force, whose members in the case of these murdered 
Irish shotild have been in the dock. 

Here are samples of verdicts by Coroner's Juries, given out to the Press, of more than 
a score of cases in which British soldiers or police are definitely charged by a body of citizens 
chosen by the police themselves as being responsible for these murders. (In every case 
the guilty went unpunished, and in several instances they were promoted for good service!) 

TYPICAL CORONERS' VERDICTS. 

PATRICK BEALAN, murdered May 17, 1916: 

"We find that PATRICK BEALAN, of Dublin, died from shock and hemor- 
rhage resulting from bullet wounds inflicted by a soldier or soldiers in whose cus- 
tody he was an unarmed and inoffensive prisoner." 

DANIEL SCANLON, murdered July 14, 1917: 

"We find that the deceased, DANIEL SCANLON, of Ballybunion, County 
Kerry, was wilfully murdered by Constable Lyons, who fired the shot, and Ser- 
geant Macauley who was in charge of the firing party." 
(Constable Lyons was afterward promoted to the rank of Sergeant.) 

PATRICK STUDDERT, murdered July 3, 1919: 

"We find that the death of PATRICK STUDDERT, fisherman, Kilkee, 
resulted from a bitllet wound deliberately inflicted by Sergeant Wolsley of the 
Scottish Horse, and we strongly disapprove of the military orders given in this 
quiet and peaceful district. Sergeant Wolsley stated he fired to kill as those were 
his orders." 

FRANCIS MURPHY, murdered August 23, 1919: 

"We find that Francis Murphy, aged fifteen, of Glan, County Clare, was 
unlawfully and wilfully murdered by a bullet unlawfully and wilfully fired by 
members of the military unknown to us, into the home of his father, John 
Murphy." 

MURDERS REPORTED IN CENSORED PRESS. 

These are but some of the verdicts, picked at random from a long heartbreaking list. 
The quiet fisherman, the lad engaged in preparing his school work by a cottage lamp 
— like all the others, they had given no provocation for the murder that suddenly cut 
them off from life. Nor did — 

THOMAS RUSSELL, dead from a soldier's bayonet thrust, given in his back as he was 

leaving the Carrigaholt reading room. The place had been ordered cleared because he 
was teaching a class of the Irish language that Sunday afternoon. Captainlike, Russell 
was the last to leave the room, for British soldiers in Ireland are as deadly as a wreck at 
sea, and the rule with the Irish patriot is: "The younger and weaker to safety first." None 
remained behind to say which of the soldiers was guilty, and no effort was made to have 

11 



Sergeant Duff and his three privates produce the guilty man. Four of Russell's pupils 
were also wounded by the soldiers' bayonets. 
On and on the list reads: 

ABRAHAM ALLEN 

MATTHEW MURPHY 

JOHN RYAN 

PATRICK DUFFY 

PATRICK GAVAN (quietly driving a cow to the fair when he was killed). 

MICHAEL WALSH 

LAWRENCE KENNEDY (whose death was cabled to this country as a "Sinn Fein 
outrage" and part of a plot upon Dublin Castle— but whom the verdict describes 
as a laborer "killed on his way home by a miUtary patrol, and we consider that 
the military acted in a most heartless manner.") 

MICHAEL DARCY, of Cooraclare, whom they first drove into the river and then, as 
the verdict continues: 

"The police fired on four would-be rescuers of the drowning boy and drove 
them off." (They claimed Darcy fired at them, but it was proven that Darcy 
was not even carrying arms.) 
In February of this year RICHARD O'DWYER, a merchant of Limerick sitting quietly 
in his shop and LENA JOHNSTON walking quietly home from her work were killed by 
rifle shots fired by Military "goose-stepping" through Limerick. 

"We strongly condemn the indiscriminate firing of the patrol," the verdict 
runs — the Jury perforce calling a "patrol" what had been in reality one of the 
daily "provocation parades" made by the Military throughout Ireland since 
the New Year. 

THREE OUTSTANDING MURDERS. 

Three of these scores of murders by the armed forces of the British have passed into 
Irish History— that of FRANCIS SHEEHY SKEFFINGTON. the well-known writer, 
lecturer and pacifist, in Easter Week, 1916— of THOMAS ASHE, known and loved on 
both sides of the Atlantic as a devoted worker in the revival of Gaelic music and the lan- 
guage—and the Lord Mayor of Cork, THOMAS MacCURTAIN, a vigorous, splendid 
young man assassinated in the very presence of his wife and children. 

SKEFFINGTON, who never swerved from his pacifist principles, risked his life more 
than once during the Easter insurrection to rescue wounded British as well as Irish from 
the zone of danger. He was seized and shot by order of a callous British officer. His 
widow was offered by Premier Asquith a house and a compensation of $40,000 if she would 
keep silent about her husband's death — which she patriotically refused to do. 

The agony of THOMAS ASHE was long drawn out. In the post mortem examination 
his throat and neck showed bruises and sores. The verdict ran: 

"We find that THOMAS ASHE according to the medical evidence of Professor 
McWeeney, Sir Arthur Chance and Sir Thomas Myles, died of heart failure and 
congestion of the lungs on the 25th of September, 1917, caused by the punishment 
of taking away from his cell in Mountjoy Jail the bed, bedding and boots and 
being left to lie on the cold floor for fifty hours, and then subjected to forcible feed- 
ing in his weak condition after a hunger strike of five or six days * * * That 
the hunger strike was directed against the inhuman punishment inflicted and 
as a protest against the men being treated as criminals when demanding to be 
treated as political prisoners. 

"We find that the taking away of the deceased's bed, bedding and boots was 
an unfeeling and barbarous act and we censure the Deputy Governor for violat- 
ing the Prison Rules and inflicting a punishment which he had no power to do, but 
we infer he was acting under instructions from the Prisons Board at the Castle, 
which refused to give evidence and documents asked for." 
The cold sentences of this verdict give no idea of the suffering of Ashe and his comrades 
dragged out in their weakened condition to the forcible feeding — then flung back at the 
end upon the cold bare floor of their cells, and on one occasion even thrust into an under- 

12 



ground unlit bare hole. All Ireland shook with indignation at the revelation of these 
horrors, and in protest over 40,000 marched in the funeral procession of the gifted young 
educationalist, who in courage, high endurance and patriotism may be cited as a type of 
young Irish manhood to-day — with traditional Irish traits, intensified and renewed by the 
revival of the ancient Gaelic culture. 

"YOUR SON . . . MURDERED BY MY GOVERNMENT." 

Ashe was not the only victim of English jails in this final campaign for freedom. In 
the same year — 1917- — four other Irish patriots died as a result of harsh treatment in jail: 

JOHN WALLACE 

BERNARD WARD 

WILLIAM PARTRIDGE 

THOMAS STOKES 

These slow official murders were followed by two others in 1918 and 1919: 

RICHARD COLEMAN 
PIERCE McCAN, T. D. 

The latter had been held in Gloucester Prison for over nine months absolutely without 
charge or trial — being one of the 86 candidates for parliament and organizers who were 
seized without warning and carried away on British warships in May, 1918, in an attempt 
to ruin their party at the coming elections. Pierce McCan, who was a country gentleman 
of remarkable physique, high culture and character and the possessor of a large estate, 
was so ill from influenza when in prison that the prison doctor had repeatedly urged the 
authorities to permit his removal to a hospital outside the jail as the only hope of saving 
his life. So much was this doctor impressed by the brutality of the officials concerned 
that he afterwards remarked to the victim's mother that although he blushed as an Eng- 
lishman to say it, her son had been murdered by his Government. 

MURDER CHARGED TO PREMIER. 

In March, 1920, the Lord Mayor of Cork was summoned to his bedroom door by a 
party of raiders who had come into his house in the dead of night. Although he had 
received a threatening note from the British Black Hand group in Ireland, the family 
believed this to be but another of the 20,000 night-raids made in Ireland since 1916 by the 
police and soldiers. The disguised men spoke commands with the voices of the military 
police, trained to command. A party of their comrades were seen with police discipline 
to surround the house, and prevent interference from outside. 

When the Lord Mayor came out half-clad he was shot repeatedly, then clubbed with 
rifle-butts as he lay on the floor. Having accomplished their mission the eight raiders left 
the house abruptly, leaving the wife and children of the murdered man distraught with 
fear. 

Shortly after a lamphghter saw this file of police, marching two by two, admitted to a 
neighboring police barracks after a light rap on the door. 

The genesis of this barbaric outrage is revealed in the coroner's verdict: 

"We find that the late Alderman Thomas MacCurtain, lord mayor of Cork, died 
from shock and hemorrhage caused by bullet wounds; that he was wilfully mur- 
dered under circumstances of the most callous brutality; that the murder was 
organized and carried out by the Royal Irish Constabulary, officially directed by the 
British government, and we return a verdict of wilful murder against David Lloyd 
George, prime minister of England; Lord French, lord lieutenant of Ireland; 
Ian MacPherson, late chief secretary for Ireland, Acting Inspector General 
Smith, of the Royal Irish Constabulary; Divisional Inspector Clayton of the Royal 
Irish Constabulary; District Inspector Swanzy and some unknown members of 
the Royal Irish Constabulary." 



13 



Ill-(b). 

DEPORTATIONS— 2,162. 

Major Erskine Childers, D.S.O., an English veteran of the great war, in a recent letter to the London 
Daily News gives this account of the scene that precedes the seizure and deportation of Irish patriots: 

"Take a typical night in Dublin. As the citizens go to bed the barracks spring to life. Lorries, tanks 
and armored searchlight cars muster in fleets, lists of 'objectives' are distributed, and when the midnight cur- 
few order has emptied the streets — pitch-dark streets — the strange cavalcades issue forth to the attack. . . . 

"A thunder of knocks; no time to dress (even for a woman alone) or the door will crash in. On open- 
ing, in charge the soldiers — literally charge — with fixed bayonets and in full war-kit . . . ." 

The world made a great outcry about the deportation of Belgian citizens by Germans. 
England's record in Ireland in the past four years is approximately 2,200 deportations. 

In one instance the effrontery shown, the injustice effected, and the colossal lying util- 
ized to condone the act surpasses any story of international deportation in civilized history. 
It could be paralleled only in the cave-period, and then it would have been free of one 
despicable aspect— the lying. 

The men who conceived the plot had not only estimated the helpless condition of the 
Irish Nation at the time, but coolly reckoned upon a paucity of intelligence and a dulled 
sense of international honor in the world to which they trumpeted their weird story. 

On May 18th and 19th, 1918, ninety-one (91) Irish men and women were seized in 
their homes, placed on English war-ships and deported to England. Against none of them 
was any real charge made. They were all citizens of the highest character and they oc- 
cupied the most honorable positions in the gift of the Irish people — leaders in their new 
national movement. 

While still lying untried in English prisons thirty- three (33) of the deportees were elected 
by sweeping majorities to seats in the National Parliament of Ireland at the General 
Elections of December, 1918. Two of them died as a result of prison treatment. Eamon 
de Valera and four others escaped. After ten months 84 of them — all who remained in 
prison — were released without explanation, apology or any attempt at a charge or trial ! 
Many of them are to-day — it is feared permanently — broken in health as a consequence 
of their imprisonment. 

FALSE STORY OF GERMAN INTRIGUE. 

The story given the world was that some few Irish had been discovered in communica- 
tion with Germany, and that the whole 91 were arrested to prevent them doing likewise. 
The evidence upon which any kind of an intrigue was supposed to be based was an Irish 
soldier said to have arrived off the Irish Coast in a collapsible boat, presumably from a 
German submarine. 

Even after Lord Wimborne, an honorable Welshman, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland up 
to the time of the intrigue, had declared in the House of Lords that there was no evidence 
of such an intrigue, even when the supposedly German boat turned out to be one made 
by Ford for the British admiralty, and the soldier an ex-British constable and army vet- 
eran, who hurried to the nearest police barracks as soon as he landed — even then British 
statesmen asked the world to believe their story. Were it not for the tragedy of broken 
lives and lost lives and the long imprisonment, the plot would have been as merry a farce 
as Gilbertian opera. 

The plain truth — and one that will damn in history the reputation of every Britisher 
that had to do with it — is that the Sinn Fein National party was giving every evidence 
of sweeping the country at the approaching General Elections. In an effort to destroy 
their campaign, to frustrate the will of the Irish people, to intimidate them into voting 
against their jailed leaders, every outstanding leader in the country but three, three 
successive election campaign directors, and every county organizer of the party was kid- 
napped and victimized in this farcically hideous plot. The story was cabled to America 
with great gusto, for America was then at war with Germany, and the lying farce served 
the side-purpose of stampeding uninformed American' opinion against the Irish Republic 
party ! 

This is not a tale of rival Abysinnian tribes or the fulfilment of a ukase by an outlawed 
Cossack hetman. It was deliberately plotted by officials of the British Government in 

14 



the Twentieth Century, and all who had part in it or connived at it when done, — and 
they are well known to the Irish intelligence agents — have forfeited their political reputa- 
tion in history. 

DEPORTING ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES. 

The number of deportations of Irish citizens by British armed forces from May 1, 1916 
to March 1, 1920, was 2,162, a number which has increased by some hundreds within two 
months. 

In May, 1918, Diarmuid Lynch, T.D., Sinn Fein Food Director, was imprisoned and 
subsequently deported for taking steps to regulate exports and ensure a sufficiency of 
food for the Irish people. 

In 1920 before and after the Municipal Elections, Irishmen elected or about to be elected 
were kidnapped from their beds at night and hurried under military guards to England. 
The Lord Mayor of Dublin and William Cosgrave, Chairman of the Civic Finances, were 
among those deported. 

"Heads of hundreds of families have been jailed or deported, leaving dependent 
women and children without means of subsistence and rendered objects of public 
charity," 
was stated in the Report on conditions in Ireland with demand for Investigation by the 
American Commission on Irish Independence, p. 9. This statement was one of those 
categorically denied by Chief Secretary MacPherson — one of his official duties in Ireland 
being to coerce or deny at the convenience of the British Government. He performed 
these duties with a flexibility that suggests the official reason for his appointment to the 
office previously held by him — an unnamed office which can only be described as the 
Director of the Red Light District behind the British Army in France. 



15 



III-(c). 

ARMED ASSAULTS; BATON AND BAYONET CHARGES— 609. 

"Our jails filled with political prisoners — innocent men are stabbed and shot to death. Bachelors' 
Walk and Mitchelstown are repeated in Kerry and Clare, and we are to fight for 'freedom' everjrwhere else — 
but for the enduring rule here of the bludgeon, the bayonet and the bullet. . . ." — Letter from President 
de Valera to an Australian sympathizer, February, 1918. 

During the war much indignation was roused in America by provocatory displays of 
German mihtarism in occupied Belgium, and ruthless acts of soldiery in dispelling little 
groups or assemblies of Belgians. 

Has even a fraction of the American people yet heard the truth of nightly parades of 
British military with armored cars, tanks or army lorries in Dublin, Limerick, Cork and 
other Irish cities? How many have heard of the wrecking of Fermoy and Thurles and 
the "shooting up" of Cork by British soldiery? 

Doctors must answer sick-calls even if night and a British Curfew Law are on the land. 
They, like others, have been fired at by the armed police without being first challenged, 
and one was seriously wounded. 

This is the treatment meted out to an Englishman who held high office during the war, 
and who was mistaken for a time in Dublin of the crime of being an Irishman: 

"I walked abroad in a dead and silent city three hundred miles from London 
and saw law in action of a kind recalling Warsaw under the Russians. Sup- 
posing the position were reversed? Supposing the Irish were running London 
and I was held up in Kensington High Street for daring to roam abroad? 

"I was, of course, held up — by an officer with a squad of cyclists. They ap- 
proached me warily in semi-circular formation, and on a pre-arranged plan. 
They closed in and at the revolver-point continued pourparlers. This in a city 
three hundred miles from London. For daring to walk abroad in the night. 

"It is darkest, they say, before the dawn. Here in Ireland to-day things 
could not be darker. The position here to-day, the forced government of people 
without the consent of the governed, is the direct negation of anything and every- 
thing the English fought for at Ypres and on the Somme. I know. I was a 
Staff Officer at Ypres under the man who has made Dublin dark." 
From letter of this English visitor in "Freeman's Journal," February 25, 1920. 

Had he been proved to be "mere Irish," this is how he probably would have been treated : 
"Mr. Phillip Maher, Turtulla, was held up by armed police on his way home. 
It was dark at the time. He gave his name when asked, and was immediately 
struck by a policeman with the butt of a rifle in the jaw. He reeled and fell, 
and when he rose he was struck again. He was then ordered home. ..." 

"Three men named Callanan, Burke and McCarthy, while proceeding on 
Saturday night to their own homes in Lough, Thurles, Co. Tipperary, were fired 
at when passing near the workhouse. It was about 11.45 p.m. at the time, and 
they were on foot. Three volleys, they state, rang out, apparently from rifles. 
None of the men were struck, though the escapes were narrow enough. The men 
assert they were not halted or challenged, and did not see any one. A police 
patrol was seen proceeding out on the road leading to the workhouse shortly 
after 11 p.m." p^.^^^ ^-^^ ,.jj.-gj^ Independent," February 21, 1920. 

Or he would have been struck on his head by the butt end of a rifle and wounded as 
Mrs. Sheehy Skeffington was, when a Police Inspector arrived to prevent her holding an 
open-air meeting that had not been proclaimed. As Mrs. Skeffington continued to speak, 
the police rushed the platform, flinging the speakers to the ground, charged the crowds 
with fixed bayonets, knocking senseless an old woman of seventy, and several men and 
boys. 

Or again, had this British Staff Officer been guilty of the crime of being an Irishman, 
this is what he might expect: 

April 29, 1919: — "When Matthew Brady and WiUiam McNally were returning 
home from an Irish festival at Granard, Co. Longford, they were savagely set 
upon by a police patrol who fired four shots into the prostrate body of Brady 

16 



after he had been felled by a blow. Brady is still in hospital, ten months after 
the event. No provocation was given to the police, and there has been no public 
enquiry into the outrage." 
(This news-item was suppressed by Censor.) 

BRUTAL ASSAULT ON AGED MAN. 

If he were the head of an Irish household, who objected to an illegal notice being served 
on him, this might be his fate: 

June 14th, 1919 — "Mr. Martin Rice and his father, Michael Rice, a man 
nearly 60 years and the father of eleven children, were shot by police at Ardatacola, 
Queen's County. The police came at one o'clock in the morning to Rice's house, 
'protecting' process servers who brought (presumably) a notice of ejectment. 
The father refused to admit the process servers. Sergeant Mattheson ordered 
Rice to take the ejectment order. 'Take it,' he said, 'or I'll shoot you.' Rice 
refused, and in the effort to prevent them coming into his house he was knocked 
down, laeaten- with the policemen's batons and the process servers' loaded ash- 
plants. Martin Rice, the son of the assaulted man, declaring that he could not 
see his father being murdered, was rushing to his father's aid, when his mother 
called to him: 'They'll shoot you.' Martin turned round to speak to his mother, 
when he was shot in the back by the police and fell unconscious into her arms. 
The old man who at the time was tying on the ground half unconscious from his 
beating was shot immediately afterwards. No action has been taken by the Gov- 
ernment against the police engaged in this dastardly assault. The English Censor 
refused to permit the publication of the full facts of the incident." 

BRITISH SOLDIERS CHARGE WITH BAYONETS. 

There were up to March 1, 1920, 609 cases of these armed assaults on unarmed persons 
by British police and soldiers in Ireland. Some of these were but outstanding incidents 
in charges made by the police to break up various assemblages — hurling matches, agri- 
cultural fairs, and Gaelic language festivals of song and dance, as well as political meet- 
ings — which had been arranged and announced, then allowed to proceed until the last 
moment, when people begin to gather. Police or soldiers with bayonets and rifles then 
arrive and proclaim the assemblage illegal. 

As former Governor Dunne, of Illinois, wrote in his account of Ireland: 

"The Irish people are proverbially intelligent and high-spirited, and these out- 
rageous interferences with their social and athletic gatherings naturally provoke 
them, and at times so irritate them that conflicts take place between them and 
the police, in which most of the time the people suffer death or injury, — and 
which, in some cases bring injury and even death to the official riot-provokers.* 
"When such injury or fatality occurs to a policeman it is heralded throughout 
the world as an instance of Irish terrorism, but when a Republican citizen is shot 
down in cold blood by a policeman and a coroner's jury finds the assailant guilty of 
murder, the murderer is neither indicted nor placed on trial." 

IRISH LANGUAGE PROHIBITED. 

On June 16, 1919, the annual Language Movement Festival of Kilmallock was proclaimed. 
Police and military fully armed and accompanied by machine guns and armored cars in- 
vaded the town and occupied the main streets. The meeting was not held, but a crowd 
which gathered in the streets that evening was savagely set upon by the police, who maimed 
and wounded several. Among those injured were many women and children. One 
woman complained to a constable about the injuries inflicted by the police upon her brother, 
who had served four years against the Germans, and was herself batoned for remonstrating 
with him. 

An American Army Chaplain who was a witness of this incident said he had not be- 
lieved it possible so unjustifiable an attack could be made upon peaceful citizens by Brit- 
ish soldiery. 

*Word recently received in America states that: 

American Veteran of War Wounded: Late in April, 1920, country people of Clare lit a bonfire the night 
prisoners in Mountjoy Jail were released, rejoicing over the return of their friends as soon as they were strong 
enough to travel. The police charged on the happy group about the bonfire, killing three and wounding 
several others, one of the last an American veteran visiting his old home. 

17 



AEROPLANES RAID QUIET GLEN. 

On the same day 3,000 soldiers and police invaded South Tipperary with machine guns, 
armored cars and aeroplanes. In the Glen of Aherlo around two o'clock in the morning 
every house was entered and searched. In some cases the occupants were stripped naked 
and turned out of their beds. While the aeroplanes manoeuvred overhead, armored cars 
and motor lorries went up into the Tipperary hills and brought down the men who were 
minding the cattle there and searched them. There were many humiliating and uncalled 
for incidents in this night-long raid, and the Censor felt compelled to suppress the full 
facts. 

A few days earlier Dundalk, a town in the North of Ireland, was occupied by a large 
military force. Barricades were built in the street, numerous houses raided, all traffic 
challenged and Matthew Murphy, a commercial traveller driving into the town, was 
fired upon by the soldiers and shot without warning. 

ASSAULT ABOUT WHICH MacPHERSON LIED: 

On June 6, 1919, a Dublin concert was "proclaimed" by British officialdom in Ireland. 
vSufficient warning was not given and many people gathered thinking the concert was 
going to be held. These a strong force of police dispersed with most violent methods. 
They fired on the crowd wounding two men, and a police sergeant shot a girl of twenty 
in the thigh. Some of the crowd retaliated and four policemen were wounded. 

W. J. McCann, formerly Inspector of United States Mihtary Police in the Philippines, 
was an eyewitness of this assault and stated in a press interview, which the British Censor 
suppressed : 

"The action of the police in firing upon the crowd was unjustifiable." 

The British Chief Secretary MacPherson refers to this in his supposed reply to the 
Report made by the American Commissiofi. The Americans reported: 

"(47) With a ferocity unparalleled even in this history of modern warfare, within 
the past few days men and wornen have been shot down in the streets of Dublin." 

To which MacPherson replied: 

"Unfortunately, four policemen and a girl have been shot in the streets of Dublin 
within the past few days by a number of Sinn Feiners, who rescued a Sinn Fein 
prisoner from the police. The police fired no shots." 

Not only were the police barracks which dot Ireland turned into sand-bagged and forti- 
fied forts dtiring the last couple of years, but the British officers of "law and order" in 
Ireland took courses in bombing and bayonet practice from military instructors. They 
made frequent occasions to use the last upon the Irish people; for charging upon crowds 
with fixed bayonets has become a common form of military intimidation in Ireland. 
"Men, women and even children are beaten down in the public streets by an 
armed military police force organized not for the preservation of internal peace 
but for the forcible sustainment of the English usurpation. Some are even killed 
in these unlicensed attacks upon the general body of the people." 

(Two Years of English Atrocities in Ireland, p. 4.) 

ENGLISH EDITOR SHAMED. 

Austin Harrison, Editor of the "English Review," and an Englishman, in his magazine 
for September 1917 describes a night he spent in Dublin shortly before. He saw a crowd 
of young people gather near the station to welcome Cosgrave, just elected to parliament 
for Kilkenny. Cosgrave did not arrive, and the crowd, writes Harrison — 

"... sing songs and gradually dwindle; then later there is a baton charge. For no special reason. 
A young man lies on the pavement, senseless . . . knocked out .... The Cossack method. Again I won- 
der whether the emotional Welsh Prime Minister knows of our police government in Ireland. I have seen 
Cossacks do that in Petrograd. I am puzzled. There was no riot. There was no reason for any violence 
... To knock a man out and leave him lie like a dog in the street seems a queer way in the Empire of Lib- 
erty. I never saw the Berlin police do that. I go to bed that night ashamed." 

In the past few years of terrorism baton and bayonet charges have actually been made 
in public halls where there is no way of escape for the people attacked. It was in this way 
Thomas Russell, the young Kerry teacher, was killed. On April 9, 1918, the police batoned 
the people of Dungarvan in the local courthouse,- where they were attending the trial of a 
political prisoner. 

18 



ENGLISH LABOUR DELEGATION SHOCKED. 

"Speaking of the condition of Thurles, Co. Tipperary, after the Enghsh armed 
forces had sacked a portion of the town, Messrs. Arthur Henderson, M.P., ex- 
Cabinet Minister and Wm. Adamson, M. P., Chairman of the Enghsh Labour 
Party, said to our reporter that what they had seen reminded them of a section of 
Argonne in the war zone when they were on a visit to the front in France." 

Dublin Evening Telegraph, January 22, 1920. 

"On January 21, 1920, the police and military in Thurles took possession of 
the streets at 11 :15 p. m. and fired with rifles and hand grenades on the houses of 
the citizens for nearly an hour and a half. They wrecked twelve houses in the 
main street alone, and prominent citizens made public statements of their cer- 
tainty that the police fired their rifles with murderous intent for they fired delib- 
erately into the houses of sixteen families, causing much destruction, though 
no one was kiUed." jj.^^j^ Bulletin, January 22, 1920. 

Toward the end of last year English soldiers in barracks near Fermoy twice wrecked 
and looted the principal shops of the town. 

Among the five Mimster towns victimized in this way was Cork, where the military 
display at night included armored cars as well as the usual lorries. 

"I am informed that the rioting was caused by the troops who acted in a wild 
reckless and disgraceful manner." This was the statement of the Lord Mayor of 
Cork in reference to the action of the soldiers belonging to the Shropshire Regi- 
ment, who wrecked a section of that City on the night of November 10, 1919. 
The soldiers smashed shop windows and looted the shops. 

When the citizens endeavored to stop the looting they were charged and dis- 
persed by the police who used the butt ends of their rifles on the people. This 
is the same regiment which was removed from Fermoy for wrecking the town. 
The Corporation of Cork demanded the removal of the Shropshire Regiment 
from that city. There was however, neither a public enquiry nor punishments 
of the offending military by their officers. 

Irish Bulletin. 

FLRED 145 ROUNDS ON PEOPLE. 

At Limerick, in one of their more recent displays of night frightfulnees, the indiscrimi- 
nate firing of the "patrol" (as these night raiders call themselves) caused the death of 
Richard O'Dwyer, an esteemed merchant, who was sitting in his own closed shop and 
of Lena Johnston, a young woman returning from her work at a theatre. Two other 
citizens, equally inofTensive, were seriously wounded. In this case an inquest was held. 
The military and police admitted that they had fired 145 rounds of rifle and revolver 
ammunition at the people. They claimed that they had also been fired upon, but reliable 
citizens held that their story of an attack on themselves was deliberately manufactured. 
One soldier admitted he had lost control of himself, thought he was on the battlefield 
and ran through the streets shouting: "Come on, the Welsh!" 

This is a tragic picture of armed forces running amuck in a quiet city, firing in a reckless, 
cowardly manner. Nor was it in Belgium. When they had fatally shot two citizens and 
wounded two others they marched back to barracks, with noisy cheers singing — not "Die 
Wacht am Rhine." 

It was "Rule Brittania" they sang: 

"* * * The nations not so blessed as thee. 
Shall in their turn to tyrants fall. . . . 
Rule, Britannia, rule the waves * * * ." 

This she does by holding Ireland, Gibraltar, Malta, the Suez Canal, India and a few 
other comers of the world recently acquired against the will of their rightful owners. 
Meanwhile there is a newer Imperial chant, that of Elgar and Benson sung with great 
gusto in the opening years of the war. In view of Britain's diplomatic shuffling of war- 
spoils, by which she gained control of over 2,500,000 additional square miles of territory, 
and to-day rvdes over one-third of the world ; it is felt to be indiscreet to shout the motif 
of the chant in the ears of the world just now — for it sounds very much like the wartime 
newspapers' translation of "Deutschland Uber Alles:" 

"Thou, who hast made her (England) mighty. 
Make her mightier yet." 

19 



Ill-(d). 

RAIDS: 19,423.* 

"Raids on private dwellings are a common occurrence. To be found in pos- 
session of political leaflets means immediate arrest. A gathering of three* or more 
persons is an illegal assembly. Fairs and markets, which are an essential part 
of the machinery of Irish trade, are prohibited; trade-union meetings, even na- 
tional games and pastimes, are forbidden; musical festivals and literary and 
debating societies of the most harmless character are regarded as conspiracies." 

From Report of British Parliamentary Labour Party. 
The night-raids made at times upon individual Irish homes, but usually upon a large 
number of houses in one zone or another, are specially intended to strike the terror of 
British might into the hearts of the people. 

The military raid made in the Glen of Aherlo, with motor lorries, machine guns, and 
aeroplanes referred to earlier is the custom rather than the exception in Ireland, as is 
obvious from the total number of raids up to March 1 — 19,423 — admitted by the military, 
and reported in the Press. 

These raids, like the "patrols" that degenerate into bands for assault, are largely parades 
of military force to induce provocation and intimidation. The London Daily News of 
March 10, 1920, reporting Irish conditions indicates that there are innumerable "personal 
raids," if they may be so termed, of which no figures are kept: 

"Armored cars, motor lorries and bodies of cyclists nightly accost civilians 
and it is no uncommon thing for a man to be held up three or four times within 
a few hundred yards. Revolvers are thrust into their faces ; they are told to 
hold up their hands above their heads, and even if they have permits are often 
questioned at length about their business and their pockets searched." 
On November 6, 1919, in the English House of Commons, Mr. McLean asked how many 
raids had been made by police and military upon private houses in Ireland during the last 
twelve months. The Attorney General said the Chief Secretary had endeavored to get 
the information, but found it would impose such an amount of work on the police that 
he could not ask them to undertake the detailed investigations that would be necessary. 
(Hansard, Col. 641.) 

These figures are readily available in Dublin Castle records, but the information would 
not be edifying, so was withheld. During the first nine months of 1919, there were 5,588 
of these raids, nominally to discover arms or "seditious" literature or Irish patriots. In 
two "military drives," alone, unreported in the press, over 4,000 Tipperary homes were 
searched, their residents were not only searched, but numbers of them stripped naked by 
the brutal soldiery. 

AMERICAN ARMY OFFICER DISGUSTED. 

A typical raid — one in which 700 men of England's forces were engaged — was described 
by Capt. Thomas Kissane, a young American Army Officer on his return from France. 
The story, reproduced in the London Daily Herald, October 18, 1919, tells us: 

After serv'ing in France, Captain Kissane had leave of absence to visit his old 
home in County Clare. British officers there, he said, boasted that Great Brit- 
ain has a right to interfere anywhere on earth, provided it has the strength to sub- 
stantiate that interference. 

He saw soldiers everywhere in full panoply of war, and backed by light artillery, 
armoured cars and whippet tanks. 

"When you want to go from one village to another, you must have a pass from 
a British officer," said Captain Kissane. "In County Clare, business is dead, 
because the people are not allowed to congregate or buy or sell goods. 

"Arrests are wholesale. For absolutely no reason, several young fellows were 
arrested in my own village and sent to prison without trjal. 

"My brother and another young fellow were arrested for soliciting in their 
native village subscriptions to buy a set of band instruments. My brother had 
received no money, so he went free, but the other man went to prison for eight 
months. 



• This total of 19,423 raids does not include any since March 1, 1920. In March and April the list of 
raids was increased by more than 3,000. In one week of April, ending April 4, there were 1,113 raids. On 
one day alone. April 3, 513 raids were made. On April 30 over 500 houses were raided in various counties. 

20 



GIRLS INSULTED. 

"My sister, who is examiner in French for the Board of Education for Ireland, 
was staying at a girl friend's house in Cork, with seven other girl teachers. 

"On the night of last August 14th, 400 British troops and 300 constabulary or- 
dered them out of the house in light attire and then plunged their bayonets into 
the bedclothes, tore down curtains, smashed the chinaware, threw the girls' per- 
sonal effects out of the window, and left the house a wreck. 

"Meanwhile on the roadside troops surrounded the girls and hurled at them 
every conceivable abuse and insult." 

OLD LADY ABUSED. 

Age is not respected by Ireland's army of occupation any more than modesty. 

The house in Courtown Harbour of Mrs. Etchingham, mother of Sean Etchingham, 
member of the Irish Parliament for East Wicklow, was raided by the Gorey police under 
District- Inspector Lee Wilson. Both the District-Inspector and the .Sergeant were in- 
toxicated. The hour was between two and three in the morning. The police invaded 
Mrs. Etchingham's bedroom and forced her at the points of their revolvers to leave her 
bed which they then tossed up and thoroughly searched. 

Mrs. Etchingham is over 80 years of age; her house has been raided many times by 
the police under the same officer. Nothing found in. it has ever been of sufficient im- 
portance to cause a single arrest. Mrs. Etchingham has almost invariably fainted in the 
course of previous raids — a fact well known to the police. She and her daughter and two 
grandsons, aged about 15 and 17, were the only people in the house, at the last raid. When 
the elder boy asked the police not to molest his grandmother, he was threatened with 
arrest and forced to leave the room. 

EVEN PRO-ENGLISH ROUSED. 

Recently Mr. Farrell, a former Lord Mayor of Dublin, wrote to the public press that 
Ireland is being governed either by a madman or a fool to-day. As a proof that he is a 
friend of England he recalls the fact he was the principal guest at a state dinner given by 
the King of England in 1911, and that subsequently he had a long private audience with 
His Majesty. Yet on the morning of February 10th between 4 and 5 o'clock, he was 
aroused from his bed by English soldiers in full war equipment, who forced their way into 
his manor house at the point of the revolver and ransacked the house from cellar to at- 
tic. He adds: "I was kept between two soldiers with fixed bayonets, and an officer carried 
a revolver all the time when visiting the rooms where my children and the maids were." 
The troops left empty handed. 

Mr. O'Farrell is even given to harboring "seditious" literature. 

LORD MAYOR AND BRITISH OFFICER. 

The residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin — the historic Mansion House — has been 
searched upon more than one occasion — even the apartments belonging to his wife. A 
British officer, resident in Dublin and decorated in the late war for distinguished service, 
was also subjected to a raid recently — the raiders arriving in a tank — a preposterous con- 
veyance frequently used, for intimidation likely. This officer, Major Childers, asked for 
and received an apology from the Commanding Officer for the hardened insolence of his 
raiders to his own person, and the dangerous possibilities of their bayonets-flashing and 
rifle-parading before a sensitive child roused in the middle of the night for purposes of their 
search. 

SINISTER REASON FOR BANK RAIDS. 

The Sinn Fein Co-operative People's Bank, opened ten years ago in Ireland, was twice 
ordered closed and finally seized. On the last occasion all books and papers and over 
?40,000 were seized by the military and the house closed to business. 

"The bank was established ten years ago by a limited company to carry on the 
banking business — to assist in the development of Irish industries and for the 
promotion of popular credit. It is described as the 'vSinn Fein' Co-operative 
People's Bank, and it is governed by a Committee of Management elected annually 
from its members. A Council of Supervision is similarly elected. Apart from 
the fact that a number of Sinn Feiners, in addition to people of other shades of 
political opinion, deposit savings there and the majority of the shareholders are 
Sinn Feiners, the bank has no connection with Sinn Fein." — Irish Bulletin, 
February, 1920. 

21 



The real oflfence of this Bank and The New Ireland Assurance Society, which was 
also seized and ordered closed, is that their policy is directed to the upbuilding of Irish 
credit and of Irish interests first. 

The Assurance Society was founded with the avowed object of stopping the flow 
of Irish money abroad to England or elsewhere for insurance, and to create a truly Irish 
insurance company. Since its inception in 1916 it had made remarkable progress and 
was firml}^ established throughout the country at the time of the seizure. 

DELIBERATE KIDNAPPING OF ELECTED COUNCILLORS. 

In 1918 the Irish people returned over two-thirds of the members for an Irish Republic. 
As a punishment for this expression of self-determination on their part militant terrorism 
increased and most of the members who were not kidnapped before the Elections were 
arrested afterward. 

Similarly, after the mimicipal and urban elections of January, 1920, raids grew in num- 
ber and ferocity. In one week in February there were over 1100 of these raids in Ireland. 
In one night 90 men were seized, many of them prominent men among the newly elected 
officials and members of the Irish Congress. In one of these raids the police seized Mr. 
Cosgrave, who has been for years in charge of the finances of the Dublin Corporation 
and was this year re-elected on the Republican ticket. The Lord Mayor of Dublin, seized 
and deported before his election, was imprisoned, without trial, in London, and finally 
released in broken health. 

In another more recent raid 200 more Irishmen were seized by a large party of soldiers 
who entered their homes with fixed bayonets, making their roimds in armored cars and tanks. 
In many cases they battered in the doors with rifles, herded the women and children into 
rooms together and there at the point of the bayonet threatened to kill them if they would 
not tell where their menfolk were. (Leading men in the Irish movement do not always live 
at home now, because of these raids.) 

The men seized in this raid were carried off to a British warship in the harbor and taken 
to England, with an aeroplane manoeuvring over the ship droning into them as it went, its 
story of England grown "mightier yet," and of her plans to secure the mastery of the 
air as of the sea and the world's oil-fields. 

RAID ON OLD HOME OF PROMINENT AMERICAN CITIZENS. 

A letter from the aged mother of Bishop Cantwell of Los Angeles, to her son and his 
three brothers who are like himself prominent citizens of California, tells its own story of 
a recent raid in Fethard, Tipperary. When the letter was received the news it contained 
was sent by wireless to the Bishop in midocean on his way to Europe. 

The letter is eloquent in its motherly appeal and the writer's approval of her boy's 
patriotic stand. 

"Prison nor death itself can crush the spirit of Walter and the brave men of 
Ireland. They have established the Irish Republic ..." 
It is of just such aged Irish mothers, too often left desolate, who have given of their 
best — the fruit of their womb — to America; it is of these the Englishman Begbie wrote — 
"... But something of their hearts and their souls are, woven indestructibly 
into the destinies of America." 

"My dear James," writes the mother — 

"My boy Walter was arrested yesterday morning at 4.30 o'clock. As we slept the 
the door of our home was battered in and the military and police overran the 
house, destroying everything before them. They asked for Walter. They 
dragged him from his bed. They offered no warrant or explanation. 

"Your dear brother was taken away from me, under a heavy guard, with 
fixed bayonets. They took him to Cork on an English gunboat. He is now in 
Belfast prison, without any charge lodged against him. You well know that 
Walter is guilty of no crime, unless it be a crime to love Ireland, his country. 

"Cannot you men in America put a stop to this terrible treatment of our 
boys in Ireland? Prison nor death itself can crush the spirit of Walter and the 
brave men of Ireland. They have established the Irish Republic and they will 
accept nothing from England but that she get out of their country. 

"After Walter's arrest the military returned to the house and ransacked every 
room, doing much damage. They seized and read my letters from 3'ou, John, 
Arthur and William. I was ill when they came before dawn. It was very cold. 
They refused to let us light the fire. The military surrounded the house for hours 
" while others ransacked each room. They got nothing that could connect Walter 
with any crime other than loyalty to Ireland. 

"Please pray and work for the safe return of my boy Walter. ..." 

22 



Ill.-(e). 

ARRESTS: 6,157. 
IMPRISONMENT AND HUNGER STRIKES. 

"I could bomb a crowd from an aeroplane with a better conscience than engage 
in this cold blooded systematic condemnation of respectable people to the rigors 
and ignominies of Jail life — to loss of health, loss of business and career, too often 
to loss of life ; not for breaking the moral law, but in very truth for obeying that 
universal law which impels all men worthy of the name of men to become free." — 
Major Erskine Childers, D.S.C, R.N.F.C, in London Daily Herald, May 26, 1919. 

Since May 1, 1916 there have been over 6,157 arrests in Ireland of political prisoners. 
Their "crime" was variously expressed by them, but it was always one — demanding Ire- 
land's inalienable right to govern itself. It was the crime of Washington and Franklin 
in '76, the crime that brought Colonel Ethan Allen in irons from Quebec to England in 
1775. 

In one contemporary work — "Two Years of English Atrocities in Ireland" — there are 
53 pages of closely printed records setting out briefly such violations of Irish personal 
liberty and property, as have been admitted by the English Censor. Those not so ad- 
mitted, though known to the Irish people, are not included in the totals given in this com- 
pilation either. 

Bald statements of the vast number of arrests can convey nothing of the hardships 
these entailed, but some idea is had from these paragraphs in the American Commis- 
sion's "Report on Conditions in Ireland" — statements which are borne out by documents 
submitted to the compiler of this pamphlet: 

"(2) Hundreds of men and women have been confined for months in the vilest 
prisons without any charge being preferred against them. 

"(3) At least five men have died as the result of atrocities perpetrated upon 
them while in prison. * * * 

"(4) Prisoners are confined in narrow cells with hands handcuffed behind 
them day and night. In this condition they are fed by jail attendants. They are 
permitted no opportunity of answering the calls of nature, and are compelled to 
lie in their clothing, befouled by human excrement for days at a time. 

"(5) Persons are confined in cells which are not big enough for one man. 
They are not provided with beds or bunks, but are compelled to sleep upon the 
bare floors. There are no toilet facilities or receptacles to contain human offal, 
which necessarily accumulated upon the floors where men are compelled to sleep 
in the filth night after night. * * * 

"(10) Solitary confinement in most horrible form is generally practised. 
Numbers of prisoners have been taken directly from jails to insane asylums, ren- 
dered maniacs by their treatment." 

WOMEN AND CHILDREN SEIZED BY POLICE. 
In making these arrests the British police usually seize the political prisoners in their 
beds at night. The arrests include men and women. They even include children, for 
last year the police kidnapped a child of eleven (young Connors of Tipperary) and for 
close to two months even his parents were not permitted to know why he had been seized 
or where he was held. Following that, a boy of thirteen was seized and also held hidden 
for weeks without any word to his parents. Men over seventy — including Laurence 
Ginnell, for years a member of Parliament at Westminster and a scholarly barrister, — 
have been held for months without trial, and submitted to exceptionally harsh treatment. 
A sister of Grace Gifford, the gifted young artist of whom Orpen painted a striking 
portrait symbolic of "The New Ireland," was held in solitary confinement for weeks. 
Seventeen (17) women and girls, including Louise Gavan Duffy, daughter of Mitchel's 
comrade who later was elected Premier of Australia, Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington, Miss French- 
Mullen, were arrested — most of them for speaking Irish or collecting for memorials to 
Irish patriots. Saeve Trench, granddaughter of the great Protestant Primate, Arch- 
bishop Trench, was in jail also for months in 1916. 

PAT McCABE, of Clones, was imprisoned for one month for "whistling derisively at the 
police." American artists idealized brave Belgian youngsters for this same act of irreve- 
rence to Germany's Army of Occupation. 

23 



THOMAS O'REILLY, who is a director of the Cavan and Leitrim railway, with two 
companions, was imprisoned for one month for singing the "Soldiers' Song." Girls have 
been sentenced to prison for singing national songs: one man was sentenced to two years 
with hard labour for the same "crime." 

MARY McMANUS, of Athlone, was arrested and heavily fined for selling a song pub- 
lished in Ireland several years before the war. 

JOHN DORAN sinned against England by leading a procession of pipers without first 
obtaining the gracious permit of the British police. He was arrested and fined $25. So 
the crowded record of 53 pages run. ("Two years of English Atrocities in Ireland.") Men 
who were suspected of being Irish Volunteers received sentences of one, two and five years 
of hard labour. 

DENY JURISDICTION OF ENGLISH COURTS OVER THEM. 

In the majority of cases the term of imprisonment is doubled or greatly increased by the 
refusal of the prisoners — as soldiers and citizens of the Irish Republic — to acknowledge 
that the British court in which they were tried had any jurisdiction over them. 

Even in small details the action of the Irish political prisoners challenges admiration, 
for their endurance, their consistency and determined stand as citizens of the Irish Republic. 
Seized usually without charge, going to an unknown destination in England or Ireland, 
facing the possibility of a death from harshness like Ashe, or one from criminal neglect 
Uke McCan, Ireland's more than 6,000 political prisoners since 1916 have endured many 
times what American patriots did in Britain's ghastly prison-ships. They will continue to 
endure until Ireland is free. 

Chief Secretary MacPherson denied categorically the statements of the American Com- 
mission about the ill-treatment of Irish prisoners. An American paper, controlled at the 
time by Rodman Wanamaker, was at pains to bolster up in lengthy articles MacPherson's 
denial — but the London Times admitted his statements were halting and evasive. More 
liberal English papers — the News, the Guardian, the Daily Herald — conceded his state- 
m.ents contained shameful admissions of British misgovernment in Ireland. 

But there is no need of other evidence to show the true condition of the jails than the 
following statement by a policeman of what he regarded as quite ordinary and humane 
treatment. 

REVELATION OF PRISON HARDSHIPS. 
The Belfast Daily Telegraph of May 28, 1917, reports the trial of a schoolteacher, James 
Joseph Layng. He had been courtmartialed at Dundalk for possessing a revolver, and 
MacManus in his "Ireland's Case" quotes the following from the cross-examination of 
Police-Sergeant Graham : 

"Attorney — You brought the prisoner to the barracks at Castle Bellingham 
and put him in the lock-up there? 
' 'Sergeant — Yes. 

"Attorney — Am I right in saying that that room is nine feet by three feet six 
inches? 

"Sergeant — I cannot say that you are far astray, but it is more than three feet 
six inches. 

"Attorney — It has a stone floor without any windows. 
"Sergeant — There is a small open slit. 
"Attorney — Isn't it devoid of any comfort? 
"Sergeant— There is a big wooden plank in it. 
"Attorney — There are no sanitary conveniences in it. 
"Sergeant — None. 

"Attorney- — Was the accused put in that night? 
"Sergeant — He was. 

"Attorney- — And kept there for five days and five nights. 
' 'Sergeant — Yes. 

"Attorney — During that time was he ever taken out for any exercise? 
"Sergeant^ — No. 

"Attorney — Was there any bed there? 
"Sergeant^ — No. 
This evidence, which was a portrayal of jail conditions so usual that it aroused little 
comment in Ireland, is an exact verification of paragraph 5 of the American Commission's 
charges quoted earlier (see p. 23) and which was denied by Chief Secretary MacPherson 
and Wanamaker's official journalistic whitewasher of British officials in Ireland. 
BELFAST JAIL OUTRAGES. 
Paragraph 4 of the same Report was directly borne out by the sworn statements of a 

24 



young Dublin man released from Belfast jail, and which, while prohibited by the British 
Censor, were given wide pubHcitv in Ireland and America in 1918. These statements 
were given to the public by Lord Mayor O'Neill of Dublin and other prominent Irishmen. 
Further statements by one of these prisoners, a young lawyer who on his release escaped 
to America, are now under the hands of the compiler of this pamphlet. They verify the 
charges of unbehevable brutality made repeatedly against prison officials, but categorically 
denied by the British Chief Secretary MacPherson in a statement given the widest pub- 
licity by the press of America. 

Here is one statement concerning a large group of political prisoners from all parts of 
Ireland- — farmers, lawyers, editors, merchants, members of the Irish Congress — who were 
imprisoned in Belfast jail for openly demanding the freedom of Ireland. They were being 
treated as criminals instead of political prisoners contrary to the pledge of British officials 
given in DubHn in 1917. On their refusal to be classed as criminals trouble began. A 
portion of the statement follows: 

"Word was passed along the windows of the top landing in Belfast Gaol that 
* the wardens were forcibly dragging the prisoners down to the cells on the ground 
floor. 

"Now there was an understanding between the prisoners and the Governor 
that w^e were not to be placed in the bottom cells as they were very badly venti- 
lated and in other ways violated the most ordinary principles of hygiene. This 
agreement we were extremely anxious should be kept at that particular time, as 
the influenza was raging. We accordingly decided to remain where we were as 
long as possible. We barricaded our doors and forced the wardens to break them 
in to get us down. My door was one of the first attacked, and after battering at 
it for about five minutes with mallets and crowbars the wardens succeeded in 
getting in. As the wardens were aware that I was a barrister and understood 
my legal rights they were afraid to indulge in any excessive brutality and con- 
tented themselves with giving me a few shoves. I was then dragged down along 
the iron stairways to a cell on the bottom floor. 

"From out the spy-hole of my cell I saw the other prisoners brought down. 
They were dragged and kicked and punched and otherwise brutally maltreated. 
After about half an hour some 200 police were drafted into the gallery and a de- 
tachment of soldiers was brought into the prison. The police dashed up with 
the wardens and started to force open the prison cells. The din now becams 
deafening, the prodding of mallets, the clash of crowbars against the iron doors, 
the savage roars of the police and wardens, the agonizing cries of wounded anl 
tortured prisoners and the dull thud of bodies dropping from step to step alon^ 
the iron stairway, all created such a pandemonium as to make one's head swim. 
All the prisoners who were now being dragged down were handcuffed, most of 
them with thin bands behind their back, which in itself is a form of excruciating 
torture. 

BAD TREATMENT OF COUNCILLOR. 

"Every form of brutality was indulged in while bringing the prisoners down. 
I saw Mi". McKenna, the Chairman of the Kerry County Council, one of the 
wealthiest, most influential and respected gentlemen in the south of Ireland, 
with his hands manacled behind his back, a policeman brutally dragging hirri 
along by the necktie, which he had twisted so tight that his victim's face was all 
purple, his tongue was hanging out, and the eyes bulging out of his head, while 
another policeman was kicking him along from behind. I saw Mr. Corry, a 
respected farmer in County Cork, bleeding profusely out of the nose, his hands 
manacled behind his back, with one policeman dragging him along by one ear 
and another by the other ear, and a third kicking him from behind. 

"I saw Mr. N , from Clare, pumping blood from a three inch gash in his 

head, his hands handcuffed behind his back, being dragged about in a most- 

25 



diabolical fashion. Many more such instances came before my notice. A hose 
was then brought into the wing and was turned on some of the remaining prison- 
ers who were left to lie all night in their wet clothes, with their hands manacled 
behind their backs — and the deadly influenza raging in the city! 

"When all the prisoners were down, the police entered our cells on the ground 
floor, removed all the furniture except tho bed board and manacled those of us 
who had not been so restrained before. We were left in this condition for three 
days, when some of us succeeded in removing our handcttffs. Others were so 
restrained, some with muffs in addition, for six days. In this state we had to 
• attend divine service and on Sunday morning the vast majority of the prisoners 
received the Blessed Sacrament with hands manacled, and in a filthy condition, 
because their restraint prevented them from conforming to the usages of civilized 
beings. 

"We were then sentenced to 14 days' solitary confinement on bread and water 
and our conditions were not ameliorated until the public opinion of the world was 
so thoroughly aroused by the facts (which had to be published surreptitiousl}' in 
pamphlets, and for the distribution of which a young boy of 13 was thrown into 
gaol) as to compel the prison authorities to give heed to the most ordinary dictates 
of common humanity." 

BEATEN IN CELL BY WARDERS. 

(Suppressed by Censor.) 

Synopsis of statement by Mr. T. E. Hardy, Fullyard House, Armagh; a university man 
who had graduated with a high record. 

"I was arrested and imprisoned in May, 1918, for an alleged seditious speech. 
The Offense, if any, was political and, accordingly, should have qualified me for 
treatment as a political prisoner. Nevertheless, I was forced to associate with 
the vilest criminals in Belfast gaol, with bigamists, wife-beaters, drunkards, 
thieves and murderers. Later I was sent to Sligo Gaol and was there treated as 
a criminal. 

"On November 18th, when I was now suffering from cold and hunger, when 
my cell was without sanitary utensils, I asked six times in the course of the morn- 
ing to be allowed to go to the lavatory. Each time I was refused. At 2.30 I 
again demanded. While speaking I walked toward the door. Immediately 
five warders rushed towards me, knocked me down and while on the ground, with 
the middle of my back on a broken bed plank, a warder, whose name I can give, 
put his hand on my throat and his knees on my chest and pummelled me with 
the hand that was free. For some hours after I lay there, unable to move. That 
night I fainted and in falling injured my elbow and tore the skin of my left arm. 

"On January 21st, 1919, I was put in solitary confinement in Belfast gaol. 
For five weeks I was locked in a cell, most of the time with my hands handcuffed 
behind my back. In the cell there was no window — most of the time no utensils 
of any kind, sometimes nothing but the four bare walls. It was nothing strange 
to have the warders and police enter the cells and knock us down and beat us. 
The police used their batons freely on me while I lay on the floor. They caught 
me by the hair and bumped my head against the cement floor of the cell, while they 
called me filthy names. 

"On the back of my head is a lump which I shall carry to my grave, and my 
left arm is at times useless, as the pain in my left shoulder is excruciating. It 
was while I was in handcuffs in Belfast gaol that my left arm was injured. 

"I am prepared to swear to these facts before any tribunal." 

CRUELTY TO SICK MEN 

Extracts from a statement made by Mr. John G. Sheehan, with reference to conditions 
in Belfast Gaol on June 19th, 1919. This statement was suppressed bj'' the British 
Censor. 

"I maks the following specific charges which I invite Mr. MacPherson to 
refute if he can. Tliese within my own knowledge (the major part of them) I 

26 



am willing to support on oath. The others are made on information supplied to 
me by fellow-prisoners on whom I can rely and whose names I am willing to give. 
I have used initials to avoid giving pain to many persons, but shall willingly give 
full names to anybody interested. 

"(1) During the influenza epidemic, sick men were locked in their cells in 
the early evening and left there all night with nothing but water to drink. Many 
men were too weak to attend to themselves or to get out of bed to ring for help. 
P. M., as a result of getting out of bed, fell and cut his leg badly. He lay all night 
partly on the floor and partly in the bed, lost a considerable quantity of blood, was 
on the verge of death and given Extreme Unction. He was ultimately released on 
medical grounds. 

"(2) The attendance was insufficient; J. H. was extremely ill with influenza. 
Pedlar and I were called to his cell to stop his continuous bleeding from the nose, 
although neither of us pretend to medical knowledge. His shirt and bedding 
were soaked in blood, indeed caked with it, — the result of two or three days' 
continual bleeding. Blood stains were on the wall and on the floor. His face 
was smeared with dry blood. He was getting ordinary prison diet, which was 
lying in the cell untouched. 

"We did what we could for him. Later in the evening a priest came to admin- 
ister Extreme Unction to another patient. We brought him to J. H.'s cell and 
pointed out the state of things. On seeing the man, the priest at once admin- 
istered the last sacrament. J. H. was then removed to hospital. 

"(3) The blankets and bedding of the sick men (about 120) reeking as they 
were with their excessive perspiration and full of influenza germs, were never 
taken away, but were left with them on recovery, and for aught anyone knows, 
were subsequently used by other prisoners. 

SLOWLY BREAKING HEALTH OF PRISONERS. 

"(4) Eighty men in Belfast Gaol were deprived of their political status on 
January 21st, 1919. They were placed in solitary confinement then and were so 
kept until (a) the expiration of their sentences, or (b) their discharge in broken 
health, or (c) as to 10 of them, until deportation recently to Manchester, and the 
balance of them — 5 in number — are still in the same condition. That is, for five 
months now those men have never left their cells or hospital except to go to the 
lavatory or to chapel. With one exception, they have all been handcuffed for 
long periods. Their only exercise consists in pacing a cell about 18 feet square. 
When I was there 6 patients had to sleep in it. They are never out of it day or 
night, except as before stated. 

"(5) Whereas on January 20th there were only three or four political prisoners 
in hospital, since that date 53 out of a specific 74 had to receive medical attention 
— roughly 75%— and that of thirty-six (that is 50%) their health was so bad that 
the Government dared not risk keeping them in prison any longer. 

"(6) J. M., thrown down by police, pummelled and gripped so violently in 
the abdomen that a portion of his trousers were torn off. 

"(7) T- M. L., thrown down and severelv pummelled bv the police. 

"(8) E. G. The like. 

"(9) M. R. The like. 

"(10) J. M. Pepper thrown into his cell through the spy hole by wardens 
and police. He banged at the door to demand an explanation. It was opened and 
he was thrown down and handcuffed. 

KNOCKED DOWN— BRUTALLY TREATED. 

"(11) J. M., a constitutionally weak man, was suffering from an injured 
arm for which he had undergone a severe operation. He had his name down on 
Sunday morning to see the doctor. Instead, although he had committed no of- 
fense, his cell was entered by a number of men who proceeded to remove his 
plank bed. On his remonstrating, he was knocked down, his eye badly black- 
ened, his weak arm severely wrenched, and he was handcuffed. 

"On the intervention of the Chaplain he was brought to hospital in the evening 
in a state of collapse, was seized with violent vomiting fits and the doctors had to 
be called urgently and gave him special treatment. Ultimately discharged 
broken in health. 

"(12) Our cells were stripped eventually of even the bell handles and the 
window frames. Nothing was left but the walls, roof and floor, the bed clothes, 

27 



a slop basin, two mugs and a horn spoon. Our food was served on the floor. The 
cell floors were never washed, but were often damp and the mattress became wet. 
"The hot water pipes — the only means of keeping the cell partly warm — were 
out of order during the coldest spells of the year. 

BUILD UP FOR RENEWED PERSECUTION. 

Statement by Padraigh na Dalaigh, North Strand, Dublin. 

"In Mountjoy at present there are forty political prisoners. Nineteen are 
receiving political treatment. Twenty-one are treated worse than criminals. 
Among those who are treated worse than criminals are Mr. Laurence Ginnell, 
Representative of Westmeath, Dr. Higgins, John Cotter and Mr. W. Sears, Rep- 
resentative for Sligo. The latter is now released. Pearse Beasley^ Representa- 
tive of Kerry, and D. P. Walsh are deported to England. Messrs. O'Kelly, 
Sloane, Rogers, Mallory and eight companions were in close confinement on pun- 
ishment diet for two months. 

"They were handcuffed night and day and stripped by the wardens. The 
handcuffs were not removed even when they wanted to attend to the course of 
nature. When the men broke down, they were carried to hospital, some in a 
dying condition, only to be built up again for more punishment. These men are 
in for purely political offenses." 
In concluding a summar>^ of the prison experiences buried in the pages of "Two Years 
•f English Atrocities in Ireland," the official compilers affirm: 

"Not even when they have been thus tyrannously torn from their homes and 
cast into prison are these Irish victims of alien aggressions free from further indig- 
nity. Irish political prisoners, instead of enjoying a treatment more humane 
than that accorded criminals, are in fact the victims of a special prison regime that 
can only be termed barbaric. Exaggeration though it may seem to be, it has 
nevertheless been proved that into the Irish prisons police have been frequently 
introduced who have batoned these helpless men in their cells. Prisoners are put 
into irons on the slightest pretext. At the moment of writing political prisoners in 
Belfast Jail have been in handcuffs for five weeks. In Belfast Prison also men 
have, by order of the Governor, been drenched by a fire hose and then left to lie in 
their wet clothes all night — manacled and unable to assist themselves. In Mount- 
joy Prison, Dublin, prisoners were also hosed, and it was in that place that one of 
the worst of the Irish prison tragedies occurred." 
(The reference here is to the slow murder of Thomas Ashe.) 

HUNGER STRIKES TO SECURE POLITICAL TREATMENT. 

The hunger-strike of some scores of political prisoners in Wormwood Scrubbs, London, 
and in Mountjoy Jail this month (April, 1920) went on until many of the men were prac- 
tically dying of starvation, and were removed to the hospital on stretchers. This protest 
(which is the one protest all Irish political prisoners must make out of respect for their 
national movement) is equivalent to the assertion that patriotism and the demand for 
national freedom is no crime and must not be treated as such — nor an imprisoned patriot 
be degraded to the class of a criminal. 

This last notable hunger-strike ended successfully, being strengthened at the last by a 
general strike of organized labour in Ireland. Preparations were under way by British 
railwayman to strike in sympathy and Irish farmers were organizing to withhold from 
English buyers their farm products A'hich are so essential for Britain's food supply. 

The first of the Irish prisoners' hunger-strikes is memorable for the death of Thomas 
Ashe. It was described on their release by some of the other prisoners to the "Clare 
Champion" (November 3, 1917). The realistic narrative quite unconsciously gives an 
idea of the heroic quality of the rank and file of Ireland's patriots to-day: 

" * * * On Thursday morning bed, bedding and all cell furniture were removed 
* * * Shivering with cold, without food, without sleep, without air or exercise, 
in their naked cells the prisoners lay * * * But the lusty voices of the Claremen 
rang out through the halls and corridors of the gloomy prison shouting — 'No Sur- 
render. Victory or Death,' and in snatches of song they recalled the deeds of 
bygone times, the glories of the past or sang of the bright hopes of the future. 

HORRORS OF FORCIBLE FEEDING. 

"Then the inhuman forcible feeding began, as cold, weakened from want of 
sleep and food, they were dragged out by l3rute force and strapped and gagged, 
subjected — every fibre of their bodies in violent protest — to this horrible indignity. 

28 



The scene at the first operation was heartrending. Clare prisoners were the 
first to be fed, and from them came active resistance to this brutal operation. 
Violently resisting — the struggles and moans, the chokings and retchings of the 
helpless victims, bound and gagged, are too horrible to be described in detail. 

"Many of them were carried away insensible and flung like dogs on bare and 
frosty floors to live or die as the mercy of a Just God might decree; and some of 
them were thrown into underground dungeons — damp and foul — so that Eng- 
land's 'Might' and England's 'Justice' should be vindicated at all costs. Day by 
day the fight went on, the men growing gradually weaker and collapsing. * * * 

"* * * It was the practice, in order to cheer and hearten each other, to sing 
patriotic songs through the cell-doors. At one of these impromptu concerts 
poor Tom Ashe sang 'The Dead in Arbor Hill,' a song of his own composition. 
And a few nights after, when he had 'carried Ireland's Cross,' and his pure soul had 
gone to its Maker it was the voice of a Clareman— Michael Brennan — that sum- 
moned his fellows to their barred and bolted doors to offer up with broken voices 
the Rosary in Irish for the loved companion who had died — that they might be 
spared to work and strive for Roisin Dhu * * * " (Roisin Dhu — the Little 
Dark Rose or Dark Rosaleen — has been through centuries the hidden name of 
Ireland's rebel patriots for their country.). 

LADS OF SIXTEEN VICTIMIZED. 

After a hunger-strike of five days forty- three tried and untried political prisoners in 
Cork Jail secured ameliorative treatment for those of their number whom the authorities 
sought to class and treat as criminals. One of these "criminal" prisoners was a boy named 
Hogan under sixteen years of age, while other political prisoners in Cork Jail include two 
other boys under seventeen years of age. The Government permitted the hunger-strike 
to continue until these youths had been removed to hospital in an utterly collapsed con- 
dition, and the remaining forty prisoners were too weak to leave their beds. The con- 
cessions demanded by the prisoners in the first instance were then granted. This was 
the twelfth hunger-strike which has taken place in Irish prisons since the beginning of 
1919. It has proved to be the only weapon by which these convicted of political offenses 
in Ireland can force from the British Government a differentiation between the condi- 
tions of their imprisonment and that of the criminal classes. Yet in September of 1917 at 
Dublin and in January of 1919 at Belfast, British Officials — one of them the English Chief 
Secretary for Ireland — definitely undertook to give full political treatment to all political 
"offenders" in Ireland. 

Glancing at the total of thousands of arrests, persons who have not met and talked 
with Irish political prisoners can scarcely comprehend how harrowing their experiences 
have been. Men, women and children alike — .seized from their homes at night, thrust 
into cells too often not fit for human habitation, they have been neglected during the 
serious epidemic of influeni.a, frequently released in broken health, some like Patridge 
and Ward and others released to die — all to know every humiliation that Bi;jtish officialdom 
in Ireland could put on them. 

But in spite of these facts, and their knowledge of what open support of the Republic 
would entail, this generation of Irish patriots have gone in an unending stream into these 
jails rather than yield for an hour in their determination to be forever free of England's 
yoke. They have adapted themselves to a life of constant alarms and hardships with 
a quiet determination that is heroic. 

It was with full knowledge of conditions and happenings in Irish Jails that a distin- 
guished Englishman — Major Erskine Childers, R. N. F. C, who won the Distinguished 
Service Order for his valor during the war, made the frank admission about the imprison- 
ment of irish patriots in the London Daily Herald, May 26, 1919, which we quoted at the 
beginning of this section. 

THE ESCAPE FROM MOUNTJOY. 

The heartrending litany of agonies endured by those brave victims of English bru- 
tality and militarism has been occasionally relieved by a physical triumph over their 
heartless jailors. There have been several escapes of Irish Volunteers from prisons, but 
the manner in which some of them were effected must for the present remain unchron- 
icled. The details of the escape of twenty Irish Republican prisoners from Mountjoy 
Jail, however, on March 29, 1919, are described in a booklet now in course of publication 
by the Friends of Irish Freedom, which also relates the unique hunger-striking and prison- 
breaking experiences of Padraic Fleming, under whose leadership the Mountjoy men 
baffled their keepers and scaled the prison walls — to friends and liberty. (See page 64.) 

29 



Ill (f). 

SENTENCES: 2,107. 

Of 6,157 men, women and children arrested in Ireland for political offences, only 2,107 
were tried and sentenced. Their sentences ran from one month to penal servitude for 
life. Upon pressure from all sides the life sentences were remitted. In the majority of 
these cases, whether sentenced for singing a National song, for having a rifle, or buying a 

rifle, for selling the flag of the Irish Republic or similar "crimes," the sentences read " 

months hard labour and months additional in default of bail." 

This serves to illustrate an interesting feature of the I^sh struggle. The Irish political 
prisoner dragged into a British court is consistently Sinn Fein, whether he is a mature 
man trained as a barrister or a country lad still in his teens. He will neither give bail — 
thereby admitting himself guilty of some offence and wilUng to give ^curity for his "good 
behaviour" — nor wiU he recognize the British court into which he is summoned. His 
attitude is — 

"I do not recognize this Court nor consider that it has any jurisdiction over 
me. I am a citizen of the Irish Republic, and I recognize no court in Ireland 
but one evolved from the will of the Irish people." 

He is then thrown back into prison with a sentence of " months and months 

additional in default of bail." 

The sliding scale of British court sentences in Ireland would be, like most other British 
things there, farcical if it were not for the tragedy lying behind it all. A saloon-keeper 
and owner of a questionable resort was convicted of murdering his barmaid in a particu- 
larly brutal way. He was sentenced by the notorious Judge Dodd, the official white- 
washer of Dublin Castle and its prison system in Ireland to four months imprisonment in 
the "first division." 

INEQUALITY OF SENTENCE. 

The Judge explained that this light sentence was given the man because 'he had helped 
recruit men for the English army during the war. On the other hand an Irishman of the 
highest character, and one of position, was given two years hard labour for singing a National 
song, and another a similar sentence for trying to save from arrest his brother who had 
committed no other "crime" than being a supporter of the Irish Republic. 

So it runs through the wearisome long lists of thousands of political prisoners: barristers, 
magistrates, members of Congress, farmers, aldermen, labourers, landowners, professors, 
poets, editors, merchants — men of every class and creed in Ireland "have come under the 
lash of the English knout," as one of these thousands'has put it. 



30 



iri-(g). 
SUPPRESSIONS AND PROCLAMATIONS: 389. 

The only proclamation of which we know much in this happier New World is the Thanks- 
giving Day proclamation. 

In Ireland a British proclamation is as sinister an event as edicts were to foreign peoples 
seized by the Roman Empire or as the ukase of the Russian Czars. 

Last year Lord French, as British Viceroy in Ireland, reached a state of mind which 
can only be described as "proclamation-frenzy." Each new brain-storm produced a 
proclamation or suppression of something or somebody. 335 in one year — almost one a 
day. A Nero, a Caligula — might well be satisfied with such a record. 

The audacity of British coercion policy in Ireland — the complacent assurance of its 
officials that, controlling the cables as they do, they can get the ear of the world for any 
story they care to "put over" — were strikingly indicated in 1918. 

After the unpardonable kidnapping of 91 Irish leaders in May in an effort to break up 
the new National party they came to realize the truth of the defiance flung at them in the 
little Ulster town of Cootehill the morning after the kidnapping: 

"You can kill our leaders, but you cannot kill Sinn Fein," — cried out banners 
hung across the streets of Cootehill. It was the superb challenge of the rank and 
file of Ireland's patriots: 

"You can kill the few you hold helpless in your prisons, but you cannot to-day 
slaughter a nation, and while an Irishman exists on Irish soil he will stand for a 
free Ireland." 
Dublin Castle soon began to realize this. But if thej^ could not slaughter a nation, 
they could with proclamations penalize and suppress it. So on July 4, 1918, when the 
United States were celebrating the anniversary of their escape from the British Lion, 
British officialdom in Ireland proclaimed and outlawed over four-fifths of the Irish Nation 
— making illegal all public assemblies and all membership in all the great national so- 
cieties of Ireland, including Sinn Fein which has scores of branches in every county in 
Ireland. 

With the grim humour of their kind they selected Independence Day as a fitting one to 
demonstrate that there was still a green comer of the earth that could be made to squirm 
under the Lion's paw. 

A PROCLAMATION EVERY DAY. 
In 1918 there were only 32 proclamations. In 1919 there were 335. How Ireland 
fared under the last may be realized from a calm account of what it endured in 1918. Last 
year is really indescribable in this regard. 

"Not even a semblance of free speech is allowed to exist in Ireland. In this 
same year of 1918 as many as thirty-two proclamations were issued declaring 
unlawful national activity of every kind and culminating on July 4, 1918, in an 
official declaration that every assembly of the Irish people in any part of Ireland 
was from that date illegal and criminal. Men who, denying the right of any alien 
government so to proclaim, spoke publicly after that date were tried by courts- 
martial and were for that act alone — and without any relation to the words spoken, 
in many cases given the atrocious sentence of two years' hard labour. . . . Per- 
sons who were known to have been listeners to these speeches were arrested, 
tried by enemy army officers . . . and actually sent to a criminal jail for three 
months." 
Irishmen continued, of course, to speak, and Irish men and women continued to listen 
and British Jails grew crowded. For whatever the individual might suffer, they were de- 
termined the Nation should be free. 

SUPPRESSIONS IN 1920. 

It might be supposed that after 1919 nothing was left in Ireland that could be suppressed. 

But the Irish are irrepressible. The Irish Congress, itself under a British proclamation 

— but holding its regular sessions in spacious cellars, in lonely mansions, in a variety of 

31 



places — was still functioning. It established an Irish Industrial Commiseion to do for 
Ireland's trade at home what their Consuls were doing abroad. This, too, was sup- 
pressed. 

For it is as true to-day of British policy as it was in 1907, when Arthur Chamberlain, 
brother of the Imperialist Statesman, and Chairman of Kynoch's, stated in Dublin "that 
it was a definite part of English policy to prevent any serious industrial or commercial 
development in Ireland; that he was convinced that policy was wrong, but that it was 
equally held and practised by Tories and Liberals." (Interview of Arthur Chamberlain 
with Arthur Griffith in July, 1907, at Dublin, and reported by the latter in his paper, 
"Nationality.") 

This suppression then was only a consistent following out of an old policy. The fol- 
lowing despatch describing the suppression is from Ireland on January 21, 1920: 

The sittings at Cork of the Irish Industrial Commission set up by Dail Eireann, 
the Republican Parliament of Ireland and representing over 75 per cent of the 
Irish people, were suppressed by force yesterday. Police armed with rifles 
raided and occupied the City Hall in which the sittings of the Commission were 
to have been held. The Commission moved to the Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, 
where evidence was heard for a few hours, when that place was also raided by 
the police and the Commission ejected. The Irish Industrial Commission is 
solely concerned with an enquiry into the industrial resources of Ireland and has 
no connection whatever with any political movement. The Irish daily and 
other papers have been warned that if they publish any of the evidence given 
before the Commission, they will be suppressed. The members of the Com- 
mission and the witnesses who have been called before it have been drawn from 
all parties and are acknowledged experts in the various industrial questions with 
which the Commission deals. These members and witnesses include: — Mr. 
George Russell (AE); Professor O'Rahilly, M.A.; Col. Moore; Mr. T. John- 
son, treasurer of the Irish Trade Union Congress; Mr. R. N. Tweedy, a noted 
engineering expert; Professor Wibberley; Mr. E. E. Lysaght; Mr. Smith Gor- 
don, Member of the I. A. O. S.; Sir Henry Grattan-Bellew; Professor Ryan; 
Mr. A. Robb, Ulster Linen Manufacturer, etc., etc. 



32 



Ill-(h). 

SUPPRESSION OF 53 NEWSPAPERS. 

In addition to this determined effort to destroy free speech in Ireland and to quiet even 
verbal protest against the ruthlessness of her militarism in Ireland. England's ofRcials 
have suppressed 53 Irish newspapers since early 1916 — have prohibited the foreign cir- 
culation of 28 others, and in 1919, as in 1916, prohibited the circulation of American papers 
in Ireland. 

Behind her barricades of tanks, machine guns and soldiery — behind a passport cordon 
which could be passed only by England's friends (which included the professional thugs 
and burglars who have been let in from England to Ireland in the past six months) — 
behind the controlled cables and with the genuinely Irish press denied to the outer world 
— ^England has tried to keep from the world all real knowledge of her ruthless regime 
in Ireland. At the same time her agencies were diligently spreading her official "unofficial" 
stories about her gagged victim — and Ireland was traduced in every comer of the world 
where modern journalism penetrates. Acts by Irishmen springing from her own terrible 
provocation — acts committed by her own criminals introduced into Ireland — were given 
out as evidence of the Irish people's lawlessness and their "intrigues" with foreign 
governments. 

The following papers have been suppressed during the period mentioned: 



"Kerry- Weekly Reporter," Tralee. 

"Kerry News," Kerry 

"The Leader," Dublin. 

"Limerick Leader," Limerick. 

"Limerick Echo," Limerick. 

"Liberator," Tralee. 

"Mayo News," Westport. 

"Munster News," Limerick. 

"Meath Chronicle," Navan. 

"Nationality," Dublin. 

"Newcastle West Observer," Newcastle West. 

"New Ireland," Dublin. 

"The Republic," Dublin. 

"The Spark," Dublin. 

"Scissors and Paste," Dublin. 

"Sligo Nationalist," Sligo. 

"Sinn Fein," Dublin. 

"Southern Star," Skibbereen. 

"The Voice of Labour," Dublin. 

"Waterford News," Waterford. 

"Southern Democrat," Charleville. 

"Westmeath Independent," Athlone. 

"The Worker," Dublin. 

"The Workers' Republic," Dublin. 

In April, 1918, twenty-eight papers were denied foreign circulation by the British 
Government. 



Ballina Herald," Ballina. 

Belfast Evening Telegraph," Belfast. 

Bottom Dog," Limerick. 

Cork Examiner," Cork. 

Cork Weekly Examiner," Cork. 

Cork Evening Echo," Cork. 

'Clare Champion," Ennis. 

'Enniscorthy Echo," Enniscorthy. 

'Evening Herald," Dublin. 

'Fainne an Lae," Dublin. 

'The Factionist," Limerick. 

Irish Freedom," Dublin. 

Galway Express," Galway. 

The Gael," Dublin. 

Honesty," Dublin. 

'The Irishman," Dublin. 

Irish World," Dublin. 

Irish Worker," Dublin. 

Irish Volunteer," Dublin. 

'Ireland," Dublin. 

'Kilkenny People," KiUcenny. 

'Kerryman," Tralee. 

'Killarney Echo," Killamey. 



33 



Ill-(i). 

COURTS-MARTIAL: 519. 

"I have seen some of these courts-martial. They deliver savage sentences for 
the most trivial offences. . . . The prisoner does not plead or cross-examine. 
Nobody cross-examines. ..." 

Major Erskine Childers, D.S.O., English Veteran of the Great War. 

Irish trials, Judges and Juries are traditionally a joke in legal circles within the British 
Empire. It was from Irish Courts that Alfred the Great introduced into England the 
Trial-by-Jury, but since the Brehon Laws of Ireland have been suspended and British 
law in operation there, trial by jury in Ireland has mostly been a solemn farce. 

The Judges are necessarily partisan, or they would not secure their appointments. 
In every generation the names of certain British Judges in Ireland have reeked in the 
nostrils of decent men. And Norbury and Sadlier and "Peter the Packer" have their 
prototypes always. The juries have been selected and summoned by the police, the omni- 
present, always active agents of British "law and order" in Ireland. 

To-day when the police find it increasingly difficult to secure any man willing to take 
their viewpoint, Dublin Castle has had to drop even the hypocrisy of trials by jury, and finds 
itself better served by "Courts-Martial" — "Crimes Court" — or Jedburgh Justice, which 
is no trial at all. 

The "Crimes Court" consists of one or more magistr?.tes especially selected by the 
English Viceroy. They are frequently ex-officers of the British army of occupation and 
must necessarily hold British ideas of Irish politics. They act without a Jury, and their 
jurisdiction extends over the whole Island. 

"In other words," says "Two Years of English Atrocities in Ireland," "the Lord-Lieu- 
tenant having discovered two or more willing tools, can and does send them to any part of 
Ireland where the conviction and imprisonment of certain men and women are desired. 
In actuality the "Crimes Court" is a sort of ambulatory court-martial made the meaner 
by its effort to masquerade as an evidence of democratic Justice." 

The Courts-Martial, which have been held with increasing frequency in Ireland, are 
composed of officers of the Enghsh army. "They sit to 'try' alleged political offences 
under a Special Code designed to substitute for trial by jury the summary Justice of the 
army of occupation; the Judges who are necessarily steeped in political prejudice, have no 
legal experience or knowledge, and it is only in very rare cases that they have the help 
of a competent and impartial legal adviser to guide them; they are generally left to the safer 
guidance of their own instincts." (Ibid.) 

PROTESTANT LANDOWNER COURT-MARTIALLED. 

One of the most notable of the Irish patriots who is now serving a sentence imposed 
by court-martial is Robert Barton, T.D., a rich Protestant landowner of Wicklow, Min- 
ister of Agriculture in President de Valera's Cabinet, and who was himself in 1916 as a 
Volunteer Officer in the British army detailed to help put down the Easter Rising. What 
he learned then changed all the British views in which he had been bred, and when he 
could secure his discharge from the English army he entered upon the Sinn Fein political 
campaign of 1918. 

Arrested and court-martialled after one of his speeches, he escaped from jail on St. 
Patrick's Day, 1919, and for ten months was "on the run" — which means an outlaw in 
British parlance, but the honored guest in every Irish home where he might find himself. 
The daring of an Irishman "on the run" was well exemplified to the members of the Ameri- 
can Commission during their visit to Ireland, for Barton not only entertained them in his 
own manor house by historic Glendalough, but he attended one session of the Irish Con- 
gress, and joined them as a guest at the Lord Mayor's reception for the Americans. 

It was true that a cordon of soldiers and machine-guns surrounded the Mansion House 
for hours before the reception, and Barton was one of the men they sought as they ran- 

34 



sacked the Mansion House — but after the soldiers withdrew, Barton with his comrade 
"outlaw," O'Kelly, appeared in the receiving-line in evening-dress with every evidence of 
a calm and unhurried toilet. 

Early in this year (1920), however, Barton was again seized by the poHce, as they raided 
a house hoping to find other patriots. He was court-martialled, and is now serving a 
three-year sentence. His arrest and sentence are outrages against human liberty. So 
are other daily occurrences in Ireland, yet the Irish people are going ahead in their con- 
test with a grim, quiet heroism that is too near yet to be fully appreciated. 

Clement Shorter, an English Journalist of note, stated in a recent interview in Dublin: 

"I see a militarism to-day (in Ireland) which is unparalleled in Europe, with 
machine guns and tanks and armored, cars everywhere." 
". . . — and Young Ireland is not dismayed." 

{Londcm Daily Mail, Dec. 11, 1919.) 



35 



IV. 

MISCELLANEOUS OUTRAGES. 

"The fact is, Castle Government in Ireland is infamous. Men are spirited 
away without charge or trial, children are arrested for selling flags or whistling 
derisively at the police, fairs or markets on which the whole agricultural population 
depend for their livelihood are stupidly suppressed without cause. 

"This fatuous reign of ineffective coercion brings its inevitable train of crime 
and outrage, and the criminals appear to be about the only persons who escape 
Mr. MacPherson's clutches." 
Capt. Wedgwood Benn, English M.P., in letter to Edinburgh Evening News, quoted in 
Dublin Evening Telegraph of August 1, 1919. 

KIDNAPPING CHILDREN. 

The details of the kidnapping of the Connors child were suppressed by the British censor 
in Ireland, but are given here in a statement by the mother of the child, who was only 
11 years old: 

"On Monday, February 10, 1919, my boy, Timothy, as he was leaving school 
at Greenvant, was stopped by a body of police, who asked his name; then the 
District Inspector asked him some questions and he was lifted into a motor 
wagon surrounded by soldiers and police and driven off crying to Tipperary bar- 
racks. His father happened to be on the road near at hand and saw him taken 
away, but the police refused to answer him as to why he was taken or where he 
was to go. 

"We both went to Tipperary barracks to see him, but though we waited there over 
two hours we were told nothing, except that he would be all right and we were 
not allowed to see him. No one was allowed to see him and no account of why 
he was kept was given to anybody. I next heard from my neighbors that he 
was seen at Limerick Junction on Friday, 14th, with a big coat over his head and 
cr>nng bitterly as he was put into the Dublin train accompanied by four police- 
men. At Thurles Station he was also seen crying. His father and I came to 
Tipperary to find out about him, but were given no information. He was kept 
in Dublin eight weeks and three days, and we had no knowledge where he was 
and I was very troubled because he was not strong but a nervous child. 

"While he was in Dublin he was examined every second day at Dublin Castle 
and questioned about a thing he knew nothing about. He was promised money 
and clothes and that he would have a good time, if he would tell that such and 
such a person shot the police. During all his stay in the police barracks a police- 
man with a rifle and revolver was constantly with him day and night; he was 
never allowed to go to Church, nor to stop anybody outside of the police and 
authorities. 

"My other son, aged 18 years, was arrested at the house where he worked, on 
February 12th, and had to endure a similar ordeal, being kept in close confine- 
ment, without bed, or change of clothes, exercise or company for seventeen days, 
and was then dismissed without explanation or apology." 

Statement of Johanna Connors, of Greenvant, Tipperary. 

HARSH TREATMENT FOR WOMEN. 

"The allegation that women of respectability and refinement are arrested 
without warrant, transported to distant parts and badly treated, is quite true. 
It happened to my wife after her arrest. She was arrested in Crossmolina and 
ultimately taken to Castlebar to be handed over to the military. They refused 
to receive her. She was then kept in the police barracks there and in the end 
turned adrift in a strange town and refused her fare back home, or even her 
hotel expenses for the night. Altogether she was ten days in custody, during 
which time she had no sleeping accommodation or other accommodation fit or 
proper for a woman. ..." 

Extract from statement of John C. Sheehan, June 19, 1919. 

36 



POLICE DESTROYED WOMEN'S SHOP. 

"The Misses Sharkey of Strokestown, County Roscommon, who were twice 
imprisoned for seUing 'seditious' literature, which had been passed by the 
EngHsh Press Censor in Ireland, had all their goods to the value of ?17,250 
confiscated by armed police on May 22nd, 1919. The goods consisted of 
stationery, books and general drapery goods. As a result, these two girls were 
forced into bankruptcy. The goods have now, after six months, been restored, 
but in such a condition that they realized only ^425 in an auction sale." 

Irish Despatch, Nov., 1919. 

JAIL FOR SINGING SONGS. 

At a special Crimes Court, held recently in Castlebar, Martin Thornton, Irish 
teacher, and Patrick Hoban, were sent to jail for two months under heavy escort, the 
former for reciting a "seditious" recitation and the latter for singing a song called "The 
Dublin Brigade" at a local concert. 

Michael Costello, Drumsna, was at Cavan sentenced to fourteen days' imprisonment 
for singing a song when passing a police patrol. 

IRISH REGIMENTS HURRIED AWAY. 

"Irishmen in London who take no part in politics, looking from a distance at 
the sore plight of their country, cannot help corelating with recent untoward 
events there the fact — of sinister portent — that out of seven regiments ordered to 
remote Eastern stations, no less than four are Irish regiments. Why, they ask, 
this anxiety to get these Irish regiments out of the way?" 

London Correspondent, Irish Independent, January 12, 1920. 
History gives the answer. In the years before the prematurely provoked Irish Rising 
of 1798 all the Irish regiments were hurried away from Ireland and the country gradually 
planted with British soldiery. At the same time with 18th century tactics (more cruel 
but not more effective than those related here of 1920) the country was being driven to 
despair and torture. 

Half-hangings, pitch-tar caps on head, whippings to death and other such practices 
impelled Sir John Moore, the gallant hero of Corunna, to resign his command in Ireland 
as a protest against the outrages. Even General Abercrombie, Chief-in-command, also 
declined to remain in Ireland when he learned, as he officially reported, that — "Every 
cruelty and crime that could be committed by Cossacks or Calmucks had been committed 
in Ireland by the army and with the sanction of those in high office." 

Abercrombie and Moore, as British officers and gentlemen, would have protested in 
1920 against the assassination of Lord Mayor MacCurtain, and the kidnapping of Lord 
Mayor O 'Kelly. No British official in Ireland is known to have protested to-day. 

MILITARY RULE AND COST OF LIVING. 

The English Labour Party's Delegation in Ireland on, visiting Tipperary issued a report 
stating that: 

"The delegates were very much surprised to learn that the present military 
prohibition of fairs and markets was responsible for increasing the cost of living 
to the people of Tipperary by at least 125 per cent. The representatives whom 
they met repeated the emphatic protest which they heard elsewhere against 
those prohibitions of fairs and markets which were causing immense hardships, 
especially to the poorer classes." 
Lord Inchiquin, Col. O'Callaghan-Westropp, Lord Monteagle and other Irish gentle- 
men of humane principles, though politically opposed to the Irish Republic party, have 
protested vigorously against the uncalled-for cruelty of British suppression of cattle sales, 
fairs, etc. As indicated by the Labour Delegates this action has caused great hardship 
to the poor. 

HANGING LABOR LEADER BY HANDS. 
"Circumstances attending the deportation of Alderman William O'Brien, 
secretary of the Irish Trades Union Congress, have caused a wave of wild anger 
here. Deportations of well-known men are matters of course, but in this case, 
cruel and unnecessary brutality was used. 

"Officials of the Irish Transport Workers' Union were waiting on Kingstown 
Pier at the time a military motor lorry filled with armed and helmeted soldiers 
drove up. 

37 



"In the centre of this imposing escort Alderman O'Brien stood xwith his hands 
lashed at the full stretch to a beam above his head. He was thus held in a stand- 
ing position. To a man with the full use of his limbs this might not be a great 
inconvenience for a short time, but O'Brien is a cripple, and broken bones in one 
of his legs made the position one of cruel torture. It might be said that he was 
positively hanging by his hands in this manner. 

"One of the most respected and beloved of Ireland's labor leaders was carried 
off in this fashion to an English prison." 

Dublin Correspondent in London Daily Herald^ March 6, 1920. 

SHOOTING ON IRISHMEN— APPROVED. 

"There was another remarkable anti-Irish outburst in the House of Commons 
to-day when reference was made to the conflict between troops and the people which 
has plunged Dublin into mourning. 

"The Chief Secretary's story of the shooting was vehemently cheered by the 
Coalition, especially the announcement that the soldiers fired ten rounds into the 
crowd. Col. Yates then suggested that the officer who gave the order for shoot- 
ing be commended, and the outburst of cheering with which the suggestion was 
greeted showed that it had the hearty support of the great majority of English 
members of the House." 

Special Despatch from London to New York World, March 23, 1920. 

TORTURING EXPECTANT MOTHER. 

"I can only lift a comer of the veil. The sum of suffering, gallantly and for the 
most part silently borne by Irish people during the last four years, passes compu- 
tation. Raids upon private houses, for instance, which are a minor feature in 
the regime, number over 20,000 in the last two years alone. 

"I begin with some examples where hardship to women and children is the 
chief feature. All are recent Dublin cases, and all have been the subject of 
scrupulously careful investigation. 

"Mrs. Maurice Collins was within five weeks of her confinement when her house 
at 65 Parnell Street was raided at 3.30 a. m. on January 31 last. The usual thun- 
der of knocks was followed by a demand in vile language for entry. Mr. Collins 
was arrested on the spot. In the ensuing search the officer insisted on examining 
the bedroom of Mrs. Collins, who had jumped out of bed in a state of nervous ter- 
ror. He was sorry, he said, but it was his duty. Her husband was carried off 
to gaol under 14B — the lettre de cachet section — and eleven days later was 
deported, suddenly to England. 

"At the news she collapsed, was prematurely confined, and became dangerously 
ill. The fact being verified by the authorities, her husband was allowed home 
on parole for three weeks, due to expire on March 5th, but on the morning of the 
3rd there was another raid, aifd in the afternoon a third, with 40 soldiers and two 
police. Once again they insisted on searching the woman's room, and the effect 
on her was so serious that Mr. Collins received an extension of parole till the 12th. 

"On the 10th at 1 a. m., as though there was a method in this crazy persecu- 
tion, a fourth raid fell on the house and once more the officer gained entry to the 
sick room in spite of vehement protests, for the woman's nerves were now utterly 
unstrung. As a concession he entered alone, leaving the fixed bayonets outside. 
But this was the climax; there were pitiful screams at every movement — the 
flash of his torch, the opening of a wardrobe door. . . . Women of England, you 
have votes and power: this is your responsibility. 

"On a statement by the doctor to the Castle that he would not otherwise guar- 
antee the woman's life, Mr. Collins was allowed to stay until March 25th, and then 
went back to the English gaol. Neither she nor heJcnow or are intended to know 
when they will meet again or why he is imprisoned. Like hundreds of others 
he will have no trial because the Government admits there is no evidence. ._. ." 

Major Eeskine Childers in the London Daily News. 

PROTESTANT "J. P." ROBBED. 

Mr. George O'Grady, Justice of the Peace at Rochestown, Co. Cork, Ireland, recently 
resigned his office. Writing to the Lord Chancellor, this Protestant gentleman, owner 
of an extensive farm, said: 

38 



"On March 9th my house was raided by military and police, my wife's jewelry 
and money, to the value of 200 pounds, taken and I was placed under arrest and 
taken to Cork Prison, being liberated after five days, without any charge made 
against me or even an apology for my detention. 

"In consequence of my own treatment and similar unjust cases reported to me 
I find that I cannot longer conscientiously continue to act as an impartial judge 
between the Crown and the people." 

BITTER INJUSTICE IN TAXES. 

The total revenue extracted from Ireland by England in 1919 was $186,375,000. 

These millions are handled and controlled by the British Treasury, which doles back 
to Ireland for civil expenditvu-es — sometimes in the patronizing form of "free grants" — 
a total of $67,685,000. 

Much of these $67,685,000 go to pay highly-salaried English officials, paid at a higher 
rate than American Federal officials whether President or Judge. 

Of these $67,000,000 over $8,512,500 were expended upon the poHce of Ireland— and 
the estimates for the current year, 1919-1920, for police alone are about $17,000,000. 

Of the remaining $118,000,000 absorbed into the British Treasury last year from Ireland, 
the Irish people have not the accounting of one farthing of it: Unless a lurid statement 
of the Hon. Winston Churchill at Westminster be considered an accounting. He claimed 
that England was expending over $50,000,000 yearly on her army in Ireland. Who pays 
the price of Ireland's torture — Ireland or America? 

STARVING EDUCATION: FATTENING POLICE. 

There are visions of half-paid teachers and of raids and bayonet charges and armored 
cars behind these comments in the "Irish Independent" in its editorial columns of Novem- 
ber 20, 1919: 

"In this country we have the strange anomaly that more money is spent upon 
police than on primary education. For the latter the amount voted in the current 
year is only $13,605,000; the police vote including the cost under the Bill now to 
become law is $17,675,395. The estimates make provision for 11,^02 police- 
men; the number of teachers in the service at the end of December 1917 was 
15,820." 

TUBERCULOSIS INCREASED BY LACK OF DRAINAGE. 

The surplus of Ireland's revenue last year (extracted and absorbed into the English 
Treasury) over the amount expended in Ireland for civil administration was over $118,000,- 
000. 

That money spent on arterial drainage, reforestation, etc., as some of it would have 
been by an Irish Government, would have given employment to 180,000 young Irishmen. 
Lord French admits (see p. 7) that he wants to see this remnant of Irish manhood get 
out of the country — although their going would certainly mean that England's economic 
pressure on their country had driven them to emigrate as an alternative to semi-starvation. 

That large surplus in the Irish revenue was not spent 'in Ireland by Irishmen, however, 
consequently this year again destructive floods came up unhindered, as these items from 
the Irish daily press indicate: 

"The English Labour Party delegates on their way to Belfast travelled through 
a vast extent of country covered by water in the vicinity of Portadown. Thou- 
sands of acres are inundated along the River Bann area. The floors were actually 
encroaching on the railway. They had already entered Portadown, many of 
whose inhabitants are gravely inconvenienced." January 28, 1920. 

"The villages along the valley of the Middle Shannon are suffering indescrib- 
able miseries. Village after village had in parts to be abandoned during the 
last month. The whole countryside for miles inland in the Counties of Galway, 
Roscommon, Westmeath and King's County is one vast lake." January 26, 1920. 

Commenting on the flooding of the Shannon, the Barrow and the Bann "Young 
Ireland" on January 31, says: 

"As a result of the persistent refusal of the British Government to permit 
a National arterial drainage scheme to be carried out, ten of thousands of acres 
of arable land are lost to the country, and the productive power of hundreds of 

39 



thousands of other acres has been decreased, the mean temperature of the coun- 
try has been reduced, and tubercular disease has doubled its percentage . . ." 
"In 110 years ten 'Commissions' appointed by that Government have reported 
these facts — and all reported on simple schemes by which this periodical devas- 
tation could be prevented. In every case the reports have been ignored. A 
hundred years ago, an expenditure of fifty thousand pounds would have pre- 
served the dwellers by the Shannon, the Barrow, and the Bann from these inunda- 
tions. It would have saved the people of the country millions of money — 
but that money would not be permitted to be expended by those who imposed, 
gathered and enjoyed the taxes of the Irish people." 

COUNTY COUNCILS' OFFER REJECTED. 

"A few years ago the English Government ordered an 'Official Inquiry' to 
find out what ten Commissions and Inquiries had already reported — the cause 
and remedy for these inundations. The Inquiry reported as usual, and the 
County Councils of the affected areas offered to supply part of the cost of a proper 
system of arterial drainage. What happened? The English Government re- 
fused to permit any of the proceeds of that Irish taxation which it sent to its 
Treasury to be applied to the work. 

"And so again thousands of people are suffering destitution and misery, hun- 
dreds of farms are under water, and the produce which should supply food for 
the people is being destroyed— because Ireland's money will not be permitted 
to be used to serve Ireland's interests." 

SUPPRESSING IRISH LOAN AND PROGRAMME. 

"On Tuesday, September 9th, 1919, a Proclamation was issued by Lord French 
and the Privy Council of Ireland suppressing Dail Eireann, the National Assembly 
elected by the people of Ireland in December, 1918. It is interesting to note that 
no such move was made by the English Government until Dail Eireann had 
framed and published a constructive programme for Ireland. Consuls had been 
appointed in foreign countries to watch Ireland's trade and industrial interests; 
the maintenance and development of the Irish Fishing industry had been decreed, 
and a large siun of money authorized to be used for this purpose; a National Com- 
mission of Enquiry into the Resources and Industries of Ireland had been ap- 
pointed ; and a National Loan floated to aid these and other purposes of National 
importance." Irish Despatch, September 10, 1919. 

The Consuls proceeded to their posts abroad; but the Commission into the Resources 
and Industries of Ireland was harried and hunted in its sessions and finally suppressed, 
newspapers being previously prohibited from reporting its progress. The Irish National 
Loan is being subscribed abroad and in a remarkable degree in Ireland — considering the 
handicaps placed upon it there. 

For publishing the prospectus of the Loan the entire National Press of Ireland was 
closed down. Hundreds of houses were raided by military and police in search of lit- 
erature advocating the Loan. Mr. Alex MacCabe, Member of Parliament for South Sligo 
was sent to prison for three months and Mr. W. M. Swanton, prominent townsman and 
merchant of Castletownbere, County Cork, was sentenced to five months imprisonment, 
the former for speaking publicly in favour of the Loan, the latter for exhibiting the Loan 
prospectus in the window of his business premises. 

A man from Cork has been sent to prison for two months for carrying a Loan prospectus 
in his pocket. Warrants have been issued for the arrest of many other men who spoke 
in favour of the Loan and the latest reports from Ireland state that the English Govern- 
ment's campaign against the Loan "is being continued with a vigour amounting almost 
to ferocity." 

HEAVY FINES ON IRISH PEOPLE. 

The Recorder of Galway — an English appointed magistrate — has awarded 1,200 pounds 
compensation to a police sergeant who lost an eye whilst endeavouring to arrest a lunatic 
who "held the police at bay with a shot gun and ultimately perished in the flames of his 
own cottage." The amount is to be levied off the rate payers of Galway district as if 
they were responsible for the madman's actions. This decision has been given under the 
Malicious Injuries Act by which the Irish people have been mulcted in fines amounting 
to many hundreds of thousands of pounds for crimes with which they have no connec- 
tion and no sympathy. This system is the same as that pursued by the Germans in in- 
vaded Belgiiun. 

40 



TREATMENT OFriRISH MEMBERS. 

In December 1918 — 73 out of 105 Irish members were returned by constituencies au- 
thorizing them to estabUsh an Irish Repubhc Government. 

Sixty-three (63) of these have been imprisoned by the English Government — many 
of them more than once. 

Thirty-eight (38) of these were imprisoned without trial of any kind for periods from 
three to eighteen months. 

Twenty-five (25) were tried by courts-martial or "removable" magistrates. 

They comprise representatives of the Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches, which 
two churches together constitute over 90 per cent of the Protestant population of Ireland, 
as well as of the Catholic Church. They include Barristers, Landlords, Farmers, Jour- 
nalists, Doctors, Professors, Manufacturers, Labor Unionists, Merchants and Public 
Ofhcials. 

Last autumn the British Chief Secretary in Ireland stated that a number, of these mem- 
bers of the Irish Congress had been arrested on charges of inciting to murder. Arthur 
Griffith, Acting President of Ireland, made a counter-statement that not one charge of 
that kind had been made against the Irish members arrested and the Chief Secretary's 
statement was consequently a false statement. 

CIVILIAN POLICE ARRESTED. 

As the regular police force in Ireland has been for the past five years more than ever 
utilized for purely political purposes, when the back-wash of Europe's post-war crime- 
wave reached Ireland last year, Irish farmers in numerous districts established their 
own Vigilance Committees. In this work begun at Abbeyfeale, County Limerick, civil- 
ians organized patrols for the night, and they soon caused the district to return to its 
normal quiet. They were praised for their efficiency by correspondents of London papers 
in the country, and numerous districts followed their example. T an — perhaps because 
they were keeping order, perhaps because they were Sinn Fein — the British armed con- 
stabulary gathered the.se civilian police into military lorries — practically encouraging the 
petty robberies to continue.^ 

ATROCITIES OF BRITISH PRISONS. 

The London Daily News of June 12, 1919, states: 

"The account given of the barbarities inflicted on political prisoners in Mount- 
joy is probably only too accurate in the main, and we do not doubt that the story 
will do good service in forcing the full facts into the light." 

Under the heading of "Arrests" some space has been given to the miseries imposed on 
pohtical prisoners in Belfast gaol (see page 25), but there are certain hardships common 
to all British jails in Ireland, where political prisoners are treated as criminals.* The 
diet, however sufficient it might be for a physique broken with crime, has been utterly 
inadequate for the healthy young men imprisoned for political reasons. In a group of over 
60 in one jail, each lost from twenty to fort}^ pounds in a month. Not alone was the food 
insufficient, but it was particularly bad owing to deterioration of war-supplies. 

When the ventilation was too bad and insufficient the prisoners broke the windows 
and let in the air. On one occasion to punish the protesting prisoners, the windows were 
screwed down so that not a breath of air could enter. 

A seemingly guileless young American protagonist of the British jailers cited as an 
indication of leniency the songs and shouts of the prisoners in Belfast jail audible in the 
street below. A statement by one of these prisoners, a young barrister, is now before the 
compiler — and there is that in it which provokes to smiles — and to tears. For the young 
men had evidently accepted the prison life and its rigors to be as much a part of the strug- 
gle for freedom as everyday home-life was their rule in times of peace. 

THE ONENESS OF IRISH PATRIOTS. 

The simple words suggest the oneness of the political prisoners in this and all jails. It 
hints at the fierce stubborn determination steeling young men, some of whom had pre- 
viously been regarded as all gentleness. They have schooled themselves to endure prison 
life, but they will not, even at the risk of greater hardships, submit to the treatment of 
criminals which tacitly would slur their cause, their Republic, their country — their own 
honor. 

* See page 64. 

41 



This simple statement will bear pondering: 

"In singing and talking to each other out of the windows (from one locked 
little cell to another) we had only been exercising a right which we had won by 
agitations and hunger-strikes innumerable . . . and if those people (in Belfast 
jail) objected to us exercising our prerogative it was no reason why we should 
forego it to make matters easy for those who had sent us there expressly to in- 
tensify our punishment." 

A "SINN FEIN OUTRAGE." 

When Lawrence Kennedy was shot one night after Christmas in Phoenix Park, the cables 
announced his death as "another Sinn Fein outrage," stating that he was one of a party 
of raiders attempting Lord French's life. Like many of the other killings ascribed to Sinn 
Fein it was done by a British night patrol. The inquest proved — 

". . . th"at the three young supposed raiders arrested in the Park after the oc- 
currence were perfectly entitled to be there, that they were returning from a 
dance at a friend's house, and that they were surrounded by a military patrol, 
bayonets placed against their throats and chests, and it was only by the mercy 
of Providence that a police inspector turned up and saved them. They were re- 
leased after twelve hours. 

"The other supposed raider who was killed with the military officer was a poor 
man who had been spending Christmas with friends and who was on his way 
home through the Park when he was killed on the main road far removed from 
the Viceregal lodge. He was surrounded and shot. The patrol went away. They 
returned, and seeing some sign of life in the unfortunate man, they plugged 
more shots into him. The sign of life might be that the poor fellow raised him- 
self, calling, perhaps for a drink of water, or for mercy, and yet as the evidence 
at the inquest showed, more shots were put into his body 'to finish him.' 

"The military officer supposed to be killed by the raiders was killed by his own 
men." (Summary of testimony at Inquest, at which the murder was "definitely 
admitted by the Military.) 

"FREEDOM" IN IRELAND. 

Last November Lord French issued a request to the local authorities in Ireland that all 
activities should be suspended for two minutes at 11 A.M. on the anniversary of the Armis- 
tice, so that all might reverently meditate on "Right and Freedom." 

At 11.20 A.M. on that morning Lord French ordered his military and police to burst 
in the door of the premises occupied by the elected representatives of Ireland and to "ar- 
rest all on the premises." 

Three members of the Irish Congress, elected by large majorities, together with the 
members of the office staff, were placed in a military motor lorry surrounded by soldiers 
with fixed bayonets, and driven to prison to meditate on England's conception of "Right 
and Freedom." 

IRISH LANGUAGE FORBIDDEN. 

"Little more than a month ago the 'London Times' described the Gaelic lan- 
guage of Ireland as among the 'world's rich inheritances,' for its light on social 
life and history in prehistoric Europe, for its fine expansion of romance and its 
early — the earliest — cultivation of poetry in rhyme. The movement to preserve 
that 'world's rich inheritance' is proscribed, and all England from Cornwall to 
John O'Groats is unmoved. Its members are arrested or expelled from their 
meeting-rooms; ladies of position and education who collected for its funds 
have been flung into police cells and refused food for fourteen hours, and the 
monies they collected confiscated. The Gaelic festivals are prohibited and 
dispersed by force of arms. The Prime Minister of England attends and speaks 
in Welsh at the Eisteddfod, in Wales. The Chief Secretary for Ireland affects 
an interest in the Comunn Gaidhealach of Scotland. Turn to Ireland — and the 
Gaelic tongue, the mother speech of Celtic nations, is proscribed." 

Dublin Evening Telegraph, January 21, 1920. 

IRISH EXHIBITION SUPPRESSED. 

"The Aonach na Nodlaig or Christmas Exhibition of Irish made goods, held 
annually in the Mansion House, Dublin, for the past twelve years, was suppressed 
by the English Government, who occupied with troops and police the Exhibition 

42 



premises, though the Aonach had been announced for some weeks the notice 
proclaiming it was served on the Lord Mayor only a few hours before the opening 
of the Exhibition, and after hundreds of traders from all parts of Ireland had 
been put to the expense of erecting stalls and conveying goods and commercial 
staffs to Dublin." . . , _, , , ^^ , ,„,„ 

Insh Despatch, December, 1919. 

The suppression of the Aonach particularly hurt the several groups of women and girls 
in Ireland who earn their Hvelihood by the manufacture of art-craft objects and other 
luxuries for which there is a large sale at the Christmas season and for which they pre- 
pare all year. 

CARSON'S "STRONGHOLD" SHAKEN— 

AND 

BRITAIN'S FIERCE PUNISHMENT. 

It is a subtler form of outrage by which this news of the Irish elections was blurred to 
the outside world. 

Up in Northeast Ulster is a distinctive small area adjacent to Belfast, which city was 
300 years ago (and for almost 2,000 years before that) a fishing-village on the estates of 
the O'Neills. This comer alone out of Ireland's 32 counties might be described as the 
zone of British influence in Ireland, and it is a notable fact that the Irish municipal elec- 
tions of January have shattered all delusions about its being a Carsonite stronghold. The 
elections were fought on the basis of Proportional Representation which gave every 
possible advantage to Carson's British "loyalist" followers, yet — 
"Deny went Sinn Fein. 
"In Lisbum a Sinn Fein led the roll. 

"In Lurgan a 'Loyalist' majority of yesterday is now a minority of 4, opposed 
to 9 Labor and 2 Nationalists. 

"In Dungannon, where the Carsonite 'Loyalists' were 14 to 7 they have now 
only a majority of one. 

"In Cookstown, once all Carsonite 'Loyalists,' the returns give 7 Unionists to 5 
Nationalists. 

Says the Dublin Evening Telegraph of January 21, 1920. This paper pointed out that — 
"All over the area which Mr. Lloyd George proposes to stake out as the new 
State of Carsonia, the same revolt has manifested itself. Lurgan, Dungannon, 
Carrickfergus, Lame, Limavady, Cookstown, Lisbum — towns which to good 
Covenanters were what the holy places of Arabia are to good Moslems — have 
rejected Carson nominees in shoals, and set in their place Labour men and Na- 
tionalists. ..." 

In this upheaval the Carsonites of Ulster have taken their first long step toward Sinn 
Fein and its gospel of a free Ireland — which was also the gospel of their own grandfathers 
in the days of Orr and Hope and Porter and Tone. 

INTIMIDATION AND SUPPRESSION. 

England's officials in Ireland did everything possible to prevent a free expression of 
the people's will at the polls. The following is a list with dates of the acts of aggression 
committed by the English Government in an effort to disorganize the Sinn Fein pre- 
parations for these Municipal Elections and to intimidate the supporters of the Republican 
Party in Ireland: — 

Sept 20, 1919. Entire Republican Press in Ireland suppressed. ■ 

Oct 15, 1919. Sinn Fein and all Republican organizations in Dublin suppressed. 

Oct 21, 1919. Weekly meetings of Sinn Fein Central Club suppressed. 

Nov. 12, 1919. Military and police raid headquarters of Republican Government and 
arrest and imprison the staff. 

Nov. 27, 1919. Sinn Fein and all Republican organizations suppressed throughout the 
whole of Ireland. 

Dec. 10, 1919. Sinn Fein and Republican Headquarters ordered to be closed. 

Dec. 12, 1919. Sinn Fein leaders arrested in Dublin and Provinces including the Secre- 
tary of the Sinn Fein Organization, and deported without trial. Re- 
publican Headquarters again raided and literature confiscated. 

Jan. 6, 1920. James J. Hoey, election candidate, arrested at Bray and deported. 

Jan. 7, 1920. Head Oflfices of Sinn Fein Organization, including offices of Election 
Department raided and closed by military and police. 

43 



Jan. 


10, 


1920: 


Jan.l 


-15, 


1920. 


Jan. 


15, 


1920. 


Jan. 


15, 


1920. 


Jan. 


15, 


1920. 



Jan. 9, 1920. Motor permit strikers' offer of reasonable settlement rejected by Gov- 
ernment, thus preventing use of cars to bring electors to the poll. 
Kingstown Election rooms raided; literature confiscated. 
Sinn Fein candidates election manifestoes suppressed all over Ireland. 
No letters delivered at Election Dept. at Sinn Fein Headquarters. 
Sinn Fein election posters torn down by police all over Ireland. 
President de Valera's cabled advice to Irish voters held up in transit and 
not delivered. 

Jan. 15, 1920. Sinn Fein voters in Cork City attacked by organized bodies of ex-soldiers. 
Lord-Mayor-elect of Dublin, Thomas O'KeUy, seized and deported. 

BRITISH THREATS IN JANUARY. 

The following English papers under the dates mentioned threatened the Irish people 
with intensified military repression if Sinn Fein carried a majority at the Election: 

Manchester Guardian - - Jan. 7, 1920 

Daily Mail - - - - Jan. 12, 1920 

Daily Neivs - - - - Jan. 14, 1920 

Daily Mail - - - - Jan. 15, 1920 

Notwithstanding these threats the Irish people steeled themselves for this second defi- 
nite constitutional rejection of British government, fully aware that in doing so they would 
bring on themselves increased military terrorism. 

IRELAND'S REPLY TO THREATS. 

In Belfast the anti-Carsonite minority jumped from 8 to 23 out of a total of 57. 

In Ulster as a whole — that Ulster advertised by Sir Edward Carson and the British 
Government as a province solid for the continuance of British domination in Ireland, 
the Municipal Elections resulted in only 255 Unionist members being returned on the 
Ulster Urban Councils out of a total of 573 leaving the non-Unionist representatives with 
318 seats or a majority of 63. 

In all Ireland the returns are: 

Of the 11 municipal corporations — 

9 are Republican (Sinn Fein) 
1 is Republican and Home Rule 

1 is Unionist (Carsonite) 

11 

Of the 118 Urban Councils: 

64 are Republican (Sinn Fein) 

26 are Republican and Home Rule 

26 are Unionist (Carsonite) 

2 are Labour 

118 

FULFILMENT OF ENGLISH THREATS. 

After the election returns were announced the military storm broke — raids — over 1,170 
in one week — arrests — assaults — assassinations! Previous chapters give a faint outline 
of the military "frightfulness" in Ireland since then. 

The Lord Mayor of Cork who had made a vigorous beginning in assuming the duties 
of his office was assassinated in his own home by British Government police, in an attempt 
to intimidate other municipal officials planning to carry on the work for which the people 
elected them. 

Then still — with British jails filled with Irish political prisoners — with Dublin's Lord 
Mayor a prisoner in England — and Cork's Lord Mayor dying from the assassin's bullets, 
while his wife heroically solaced him: "You are dying for Ireland; die like a soldier" — the 
Irish nation stood outraged, sorrow-stricken, grievously wounded, but still unbroken and 
determined to be free — lik:e Brian's wounded veterans who had themselves tied to stakes at 
Clontarf. 

And so she stands to-day, with but one question — " 

"How long, O Lord, how long?" 

44 



V. 

"CRIMES ATTRIBUTED TO SINN FEIN." 
REVELATION OF POLICE METHODS IN IRELAND. 

"Patriots of Ireland! Champions of liberty in all lands — be strong in hope! 
Your cause is identical with mine. You are calumniated in your day! I was mis- 
represented by the loyalists of my day. Had I failed the scaffold would be my 
doom. But now my enemies pay me honor. ..." 

George Washington, at Mt. Vernon, 1788. 

It has already been noted with condemnation, and it will pass into history, that as soon 
as a truce of peace was signed in Europe, and England's forces could be withdrawn from 
France — a Reign of Terror began in Ireland. 

This statement is not one impelled by any bias in the mind of the writer. It is fully 
borne out by statements made by Englishmen and reproduced in Chapter IV. 

Up to this time — through 1916, 1917 and 1918 — the Irish people endured much coercion, 
martial law, interferences with trade and food supply and individual outrages that were 
reported in the censored press to the number of 8,928. 

They did not retaliate quickly. They endured in a way that will make the word Irish 
as synonymous with endurance as Spartan now is. But after the armistice was signed 
and England began a fresh war in Ireland — in defiance of the Irish Nation's self-determina- 
tion at the polls in December, 1918 — then Ireland's endurance broke. 

Since that time England accuses Irishmen of the acts of retaliation set out in Table A : 

COMPARATIVE TABLES. 

Table A. Table B. 

Outrages alleged to "have been com- Outrages committed by the armed 

mitted by Sinp Fein from May. 1st, forces of the English Government in 

1916 to December 31st, 1919. Ireland from May 1st, 1916 to December 

31st, 1919. 



Murders 

Firing at the person 

Assaults 

Injury to property 


20 

77 

63 

279 


Firing into dwellings 
Raids for arms 
Incendiary fires 
Threatening letters 
Miscellaneous offences 


41 
589 

70 

180 

. 210 



Murders 


59 


Firing at the Person 


117 


Armed assaults 


364 


Raids on private houses in which in 


- 


jury was frequently done to prop 


- 


erty 


12,888 


Arrests 


5,655 


Deportations 


2,086 


Sentences 


2,181 


Proclamations and Suppressions 


398 


Suppression of newspapers 


54 


Courts martial 


557 



Total 1,529 24,359 

On a careful analysis this Table A resolves itself into — 

(a) — 20 murders. 

(b) — 77 firing at the person. 

(c), (d), (e) and (f) — Assaults, Injury to Property, Firing into Dwellings, Raids for 
Arms — can all be grouped together under the total given for Raids for Arms and 
attacks on barracks of Britain's Royal and Armed Constabulary. These items 
illustrate Taylor's dishonest system of duplicating charges. (See p. 46.) 

45 



(g). (h) s^rid (i)— Most of the Incendiary Fires and Miscellaneous Offences are not 
political offences by Irish Republicans but offences against order such as occur in 
any country. The "threatening letters" do not permit of this classification as 
ordinary, for they are largely the work of the British police forces. So common 
in times of coercion and provocation in Ireland were these "threatening letters" 
during the past century that the "planting" of threatening notices by the con- 
stabulary in Ireland has for years been referred to as jocularly in the British Empire 
a,s Canada's passion for signing petitions. The first, in itself a survival of the land- 
war, is known to provide the constables with enlivening incidents according to their 
general instructions as agents provocateiirs : the second is held to be a useful means 
of filling up long quiet winter seasons. 

Since the completion of that Table A (January 1, 1920) England has accused the Irish 
people of fourteen more killings, while the Irish press reported six, in each of which the 
jury's verdict definitely found that members of the British armed forces had committed 
the crimes. These include the barbarous assassination of the Lord Mayor of Cork, the 
murder of Milholland of Dundalk and other leaders in the Republican movement. 

ATTEMPT ON LORD FRENCH'S LIFE. 

A few months ago an attempt upon the life of Lord French, British Viceroy in Ireland, 
was announced. A sage comment on this affair was made by George Bernard Shaw, writ- 
ing on January 3, 1920, in Sir Horace Plunkett's paper, the "Irish Statesman:" 

"When such incidents used to occur in Russia before any considerable invest- 
ments of French or British capital had taken place there, the English newspapers, 
notably 'The Times,' used simply to ask the Tsardom what it expected if it sup- 
pressed every popular liberty . . . There is absolutely no remedy except the 
cessation of the present political relations between the two countries, which are 
simply criminal relations, incapable of breeding anything outside their own kind." 

The whole world was again informed of the "cold, heartless and savage" murder of 
IVIagistrate Alan Bell, aged 70, on March 26, by Irishmen who dragged him from an electric 
caf in daylight and shot him. 

SORDID HISTORY OF BELL. 

But the cables that told of the murder of this old man refrained from telling the world 
that, as a member of the British garrison in Ireland, he had filled his years from his cadet 
days to old age with acts of violence to the Irish people and their national rights. He 
began his career as a protege of the infamous detective-chief, James Ellis French, after- 
wards convicted of felony. In the Land League days of Pamell's and Davitt's leadership 
and ever since, Bell carried on actively the work of the British garrison against Irish nation- 
hood. He became notorious after the murder of Peter Dougherty, near Croughwell, 
years ago, when in spite of every possible police effort, his subordinates were found guilty 
of the murder — and reprieved ! Expert employer of agents provocateurs and the despised 
"G men" (secret service detectives, Britain's spies in Ireland), he spent his last years 
resident in Dublin Castle in a web of malignant alien intrigues against Ireland — colleague 
and collaborator with French, Taylor and MacPherson. 

OFFICIAL STATEMENTS— NEW METHODS OF TAYLOR. 

This official White Paper list of "Crimes attributed to Sinn Fein" is a new method of 
attack upon the Irish people and their leaders devised by Sir John Taylor, who has been 
Lord French's most active aide in Dublin Castle since French arrived there. 

This is shrewder, safer and less expensive than the methods employed in Parnell's day, 
when Taylor, a secret service agent under Arthur Balfour at Dublin Castle, was brought 
to London to collaborate with Piggott (known in history as the "Times" forger), with 
Houston and Loames, the "Times" solicitor. With the last Taylor was at work daily, 
and was liberally paid for his services both by the English Government and the "Times." 

That earlier system of Taylor and his colleagues was as crude as it was daring, and in its 
exposure overwhelmed its makers instead of victimizing Parnell as intended. In the 
"White Paper" system of official statements Dublin Castle can always claim "privilege" 
as a bar to any action such as Parnell teok against the "Times." In this wiy English 
officialdom can slander its political antagonists in Ireland in the press at home and abroad 
— with impunity. 

46 



METHOD OF DUPLICATING CRIME. 

Taylor has a unique system of classification, by which three or four outrages are evolved 
from one offence. For example, a raid upon a police barracks or a house for arms appears 
under these various headings : 

(a) Assault on dwelling. 

(b) Burglary. 

(c) Firing at the person. 

(d) Assault endangering the person of — 

(e) Injury to property. 

Having regard to the enormous provocation — the manifold injuries and outrages in- 
flicted upon the Irish people, as indicated by the list of 24,359 (to-day over 32,000) out- 
rages admitted by British officials — it is to a New World mind almost beyond compre- 
hension that Ireland's retaliation has only been what it has. 

HEROIC RESTRAINT THAT WILL BECOME HISTORIC. 

Through 1916-17 and 1918 '^the great majority of the Irish people continued to protest 
their allegiance to the Irish Republic, their right to possess arms, to drill men, to speak 
the Irish language, to wave and sell the flag of the Irish Republic, but they made no re- 
taliation on the British forces. 

Nothing perhaps so well expresses the spirit of the Irish men during those years of heroic 
restraint as the Song of the Red Hanrahan, an early hero in Ireland's cause against 
England: 

"Angers like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat, 

But we have all bent low and low — 
And kissed the quiet feet 

Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlahain." 

They did not try to work out the satisfaction of their own passions; they only asked how 
to serve Erin best. For the inspiration of the Motherland — mystic Cathleen — dark 
Roisin, tragic Banba — and their unquestioning, self-sacrificing devotion to her is as po- 
tent to-day as ever it was in the hearts of Irishmen. 

HOW ENGLAND'S REIGN OF TERROR IS DIRECTED. 

A question frequently put to Ireland's friends in America by people honestly seeking 
information is this: 

"Are the Irish people responsible for the Reign of Terror there last winter 
and spring? The cables frequently suggest they are. If they are not, why is 
England making them suffer?" 

The actual facts can not be obtained by reading cable despatches to America, for great 
and rich and strong as this country is — the strongest and richest in the world to-day — 
America does not control a single cable terminal in Europe, and all American cables con- 
cerning Ireland come through British mediums. 

Setting aside for a moment the necessary details, the Facts may be stimmarized: 

Since the Easter insurrection of 1916 Ireland has been held under British military law. 

Since the armistice was signed in November, 1918, and England's forces of repression 
could be utilized more freely a period of military Terrorism has existed in Ireland. 

This has not been a period of general and indiscriminate slaughter as in the days of 
Elizabeth and Cromwell, but a system of "official anarchy" and outrage, more severe than 
Germany's military rule in Belgium during the occupation of that country. 

Conditions in Ireland now are only comparable to a similar period of official anarchy in 
Ireland immediately preceding 1798, and which at that time impelled General Abercrombie 
in protest to resign from his command of the British forces and Sir John Moore to retire 
from his. 

Whether this system of firm government was evolved in the quiet of Downing Street, at 
the seat of British Empire, or within the grim walls of its Imperial outpost, Dublin Castle, 
the plan has been approved by both — while its immediate prosecution lay with three men. 

These three men are — 

(1) Lord French, Viceroy, who was for very grave reasons politely cashiered out of the 
chief command of the British forces in France, and who in the autumn of 1918, "swore a 
mighty oath to end all this damned nonsense ... 'I will crush Vcie vermin underfoot,' " he 
vowed. {Freeman's Journal, December 15, 1919.) 

47 



(2) Sir Ian MacPherson, who found shelter in DubHn when London was becoming 
unpleasantly vocal about the ignoble post he had previously filled, and which cannot con- 
veniently be described otherwise than as Lord High Supervisor of the Red Light District 
behind the British forces in France. 

(3) Sir John Taylor, British Under-Secretary, a self-confessed aide, during the Balfour 
regime at Dublin Castle, of the Dublin Castle-London Times plot of forgery against Parnell, 
and one who has grown hoary in British secret service and Castle misrule in Ireland. It 
is this man who has invented a more subtle method to-day for defaming the Irish people 
and their leaders in his Government Statements of "Crimes attributed to Sinn Fein." 

All three officials have been the direct exponents of the coercion and militarism (or as 
it is called in England, "firm government") which has provoked Irishmen in the past year 
to retaliate. As the British Labor Party's delegation reported, there were no murders 
of policemen by young Irishmen, until the police began their numerous acts of violence. 

ARE THESE CRIMES BY SINN FEIN? 

One of the murders charged against Sinn Fein was that of a resident magistrate in West- 
port. It became known in time that the murder grew out of a love-intrigue — the magis- 
trate being shot, not by a Sinn Fein member, but by an officer of the Constabulary. 

In Killarney on February 3 there was another case of the mortal wounding of a con- 
stable, shot in the panic following a bayonet-charge, when the police had fired upon an 
Irish crowd. The wounded man first declared that the civilians had shot him — then learn- 
ing that he was dying he admitted that a brother-constable had accidentally shot him 
when firing on the crowd but for fear of hurting his comrade's standing he had blamed it 
on the civilians. 

When the boy Francis Murphy was shot in his home as he sat studying one night, British 
sympathizers spread the tale that the lad must have been a member of some secret society 
or was killed in a private feud! The inquest very clearly laid the guilt upon the shoulders 
of the miHtary. 

It is not alone with regard to murders that men in Ireland's national party refuse to 
be saddled with the long list of crimes compiled by Taylor. Several men convicted of 
crime in Ireland during the past year were ex-soldiers, and more than two were war-veterans 
aspiring to join the constabulary. 

At Galway in January two of these veterans were sentenced for an attack upon the 
police barracks at Roundstone, but at the time of the attack it was cabled to this country 
as a "Sinn Fein outrage." 

The London Daily Herald for January 28th reports a meeting of the Ballinasloe Council, 
which refused to pay for extra police because acts of violence previously committed in 
the Banagher and Birr districts were done by a gang of ex-soldiers who had the protection 
of the police. 

"I was present at a fair in King's County (Banagher Fair), said the Chairman, 
and saw these ruffians assault people in the presence of the Royal Irish Constabu- 
lary, and all the while the police were laughing and looking on at the whole tiling." 

ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS IN IRELAND. , 

"In February Messrs. Grace and Co., Jewellers of Talbot Street, Dublin, as a 
result of their premises having been burglarized four times in twelve months, pub- 
lished their decision 'to discontinue business until proper poUce regulations are 
forthcoming.' Although Ireland is the most heavily policed country in Europe, 
the police in Ireland are used almost solely either as spies upon the National 
Movement or as the armed suppressors of it. As a consequence, many gangs of 
criminals, seizing this opportunity have come to Ireland from Great Britain, and 
are allowed a free hand even in the principal Dublin Streets. 

"The Irish daily press has published details of two burglaries in Amiens Street 
■ — a principal Dublin thoroughfare — diuing which the burglars were disturbed 
by the owner of one of the premises. They declared in strong Cockney accents 
that they were 'Sinn Feiners.' Their mispronounciation of the term — 'Sin 
Finer s' — was conclusive evidence that they were not Irishmen and that they had 
not been in Ireland long enough to learn the correct pronounciation." 

Irish Bulletin, February, 1920. 

At a court held in Dublin in January in three out of five convictions for crime the offen- 
ders were professional English crooks, who could gain admission to Ireland although 
Irishmen of high character resident abroad are often denied that privilege. 

48 



A COUNTRY FREE OF SERIOUS CRIME. 

It is traditional of Nationalist Ireland- — except during periods of political agitation 
and coercion, as in Parnell's Land-War and to-day — that the country is practically free 
of serious crime. Even this year the Recorder's report at the Criminal Sessions showed 
only six criminal cases, four of which were larcencies. In Donegal and Derry, two other 
Sinn Fein centres, the Judges received white gloves. 

In 1916 Sir John Maxwell stated to John A. Murphy, of Buffalo, N. Y. 
"Ireland is crimeless except for sedition." 

And it must also be noted that no killing was rightly or wrongly charged to Sinn Fein 
until after the close of 1918 — until after 49 admitted murders had been perpetrated by 
British Armed forces upon the Irish. 

WHY IRELAND HATES THE "POLICE." 

Sir Horace Plunkett writing of the Irish police force and British rule there says: 

"This monstrous substitute for statesmanship is super-imposed upon the largest 
police force in proportion to population in the world." 

Ex-Sergeant F. I. McEUigott, a former member of this force writes of them: 

"The police are not to blame: they are the best disciplined, and in one sense 
the most efficient police force in the world. But the system — a nationalized, 
armed and political force, employed in maintaining a brutal and indefensible sys- 
tem of police government — is wholly responsible for the outrages and murders 
of to-day. 

"Ireland has long enjoyed the 'privilege' of a nationalized police force, i. e. a 
semi-military organization officered by a class ascendancy and controlled, not by 
Local Authorities, but by the Crown, as a substitute for peace officers. Unlilce 
all others policemen the R. I. C. are equipped in military fashion with rifles, 
bayonets and bombs and their barracks (not stations) are now converted into 
fortresses. They are political inasmuch as they are employed to maintain 'the 
party in power,' to persecute, prosecute and coerce all who do not hold views 
in agreement with Dublin Castle, to prohibit and suppress the rights and opinions 
of the majority and to permit and (as in Lame gun running and Belfast drilling) 
to encourage oflfences by the minority. Hence the R. I. C. have earned the title 
'enemies of their country' and unfortunately they are socially ostracised even 
by their own kith and kin. Such is the situation as seen from without. Seen 
from within it is much more serious." 

TERRIBLE INDICTMENT OF SYSTEM BY AN EX-SERGEANT. 

"... With over 11 years experience in the R. I. C. (half that time a Sergeant) 
I say that the inner system is based on this principle, that it is necessary to per- 
petuate and maintain ill feeling between police and people — whilst waiting for an 
'atmosphere' favourable for a settlement. This is both easy and simple under 
the same military system where the police are not under the control of local authori- 
ties or even Chief Magistrate of a City. In Ireland a policemen cannot be sta- 
tioned in his native county, in any county adjoining it, or in any county where 
himself or his wife have any relations. 'Familiarity with the public' is an offence 
against police regulations punishable with transfer. Hence it is ordained that 
the police force must be 'alienated from the people' from top to bottom ..." 

"Physical coercion is applied openly and secretly by Dublin Castle. It is 
applied openly where force is wrongfully and unreasonably used in order to create 
ill feeling between the people and the police. It is applied secretly by many 
'secret orders' which goad and drive the people into violence, retaliation and 
rebellion. ..." 

POLICE ARE OBLIGED TO BE VIOLENT. 

"Dublin Castle says — 'Remember it is essential that the people shall be 
roughly handled." 

"The proportion of police to population cannot be justified even on 'military 
grounds.' Scotland with roughly the same area and population as Ireland has 
less than 6,000 police; Ireland has a fixed quota of over 12,000. As the country 
is over policed and the police over-officered, there is an 'authority' for every 3.1 
men and a Sergeant for every 3.88 constables. 

49 



"Even under the Act of Union the police system in Ireland is brutal, obsolete, 
uneconomical and indefensible. The present deplorable condition of our unhappy 
country, and above all the spectacle of a fine police force murdered and ground 
down without mercy or consideration between those who are determined by all 
means and at all costs to maintain 'law and order' and those who by any means 
and at any cost are determined to make the present government of Ireland im- 
possible, force against force is the remedy and 'damn the consequences,' As a 
'result of this policy the police force has broken down, barracks have been closed 
all over the country and the people left without any police protection. Even 
so, the police are powerless to protect others by force, powerless to protect them- 
selves." 

PLAIN SPEECH ABOUT GOVERNMENT USE OF POLICE. 

"The Army of Occupation is for the protection of semi-military police and to 
help them in maintaining law and order. It has failed. Increase the army by 
500,000 men, put a guard or garrison in every city, town or village, or scatter 
them like sheep on the mountains, and it will make no difference. Take them all 
away and a 'state of war' still exists. In other words, force will not prevent the 
Irish people from demanding self-determination, and unfortunately the Govern- 
ment are employing the police to suppress this demand in the most provocative 
manner possible. 

"The deficiency is in moral force, and the police themselves are convinced that 
moral force never tried will succeed where military and semi-military force have 
been tried and failed. By immediately disarming the R. I. C, 'raids' on bar- 
racks will be prevented and all police stations throughout Ireland will be safe 
from attack as the D. M. P. stations are at present. In the outskirts of the city 
of Dublin, in the village of Chapelizod there are two police stations within 100 
yards of each other — one R. I. C. and one D. M .P. The former is locked, barred 
and bolted and the men are confined within a fortress of sandbags and wire, armed 
with rifles, bombs and rockets. The latter is even more open than Bishopgate 
Police Station in London and less likely to be 'raided.* 

"The police question then goes to the root of the Irish Question itself. One 
cannot be settled without the other." 

Mr. MacPherson, the British Chief Secretary for Ireland, alleges that the shooting of 
policemen is the excuse for the present regime of rigorous repression in Ireland. The 
Report of the English Labour Delegation which visited Ireland lately contains the fol- 
lowing: 

"No evidence was forthcoming to prove that the shooting of policemen pre- 
ceded the application of the policy of rigorous repression." 

MANUFACTURING CRIME IN IRELAND. 

This Continent has not been without instances — though rare fortunately — of manu- 
factured crime. The most appropriate for use here, because of its related origin, was the 
dynamiting (in a mild fashion) of a summer-home owned by the Imperialist Lord Athelston 
in Montreal in 1917. This was done by a small group of very young French-Canadians, 
two of whom had been sentenced for larceny. Months later evidence was given in Court 
to show that the crime had been done on the instigation and with the physical aid of a 
special agent of the Department of Justice at Ottawa, who while gaining the friendship 
of these lads and suggesting to them a series of outrages, was actually drawing a salary 
from the Canadian Government, and reporting his "progress" each week. 

This was Canada's first notorious agent provocateur — the first introduction of British 
police methods of manufacturing crime and announcing it as done for political reasons. 
It was a most sinister incident, and one that made thoughtful Canadians very grave. The 
political complications arising out of the war had given the occasion for this despicable 
innovation of British secret-service tricks. In Ireland they are as old as the "Royal Irish" 
Constabulary, established by England after the so-called Union. 

WHOSE CRIME IS THIS? 

With what has been quoted here from Sergeant McEUigott's statement, it is easy to 
understand how a boy's jeer or the cheering of political prisoners being driven by, has 
frequently caused in Ireland baton and bayonet-charges upon defenseless citizens. The 
crowd in retaliation wounds or kills a policeman — and the incident is blazoned to the 
world as another Irish outrage! Whose crime is this? 

50 



One effort to manufacture Irish outrages was frustrated on January 28, 1919, by the 
alertness of American Army watchmen in their aerodrome at Middleton, Cork County. 
An attempt to burglarize the place resulted in the Americans capturing two of the rob- 
bers. When their disguises were removed they stood revealed as members of England's 
armed forces in Ireland — Constables Cadogan and Rogers! They received only a few 
months' imprisonment, though young Irish lads are sentenced to two years with hard 
labour for singing patriotic songs. Had the constables escaped, this attack on American 
property would have been wired to every corner of America as a Sinn Fein outrage. In 
fact, this was done with a very similar happening, when the American steamer Pensacola 
was "raided for arms" last autumn at Cork by men masked as Rogers and Cadogan were, 
— men who were not Sinn Fein supporters. 

It was only an unusual circumstance and a partial exposure by his comrades in crime 
that revealed the guilt of the infamous Sergeant-Constable of the "eighties," whose per- 
jured testimony had sent hundreds of innocent Irishmen to British prisons. Usually with 
the people helpless and the British government shielding the criminal constable, the latter 
goes on his way "making crime," unharmed and unhampered. 

Even when the constable or soldier does not make special individual effort to injure 
the Irish people and win money rewards or promotions, his very presence and the system 
under which he works provokes the Irish men to rid their country of this alien excrescence. 

ENGLISH GOVERNMENT SUBORNS PERJURY. 

The following despatch from Ireland arrived just before going to press: 

The suborning of perjury by the Headquarters of the English Military Government in 
Ireland and by the Chief officials of the Royal Irish Constabulary has just been exposed 
in the Dublin Law Courts. 

Mr. John Madden of Gortaha, County Tipperary, was arrested on September 3rd, 

1919, on a charge of having murdered at Lorrha in the same county, Sergeant Brady of the 
Royal Irish Constabulary. Having passed through a series of preliminary investigations 
he was returned for trial before a "Special Jury" in County Dublin. The venue was 
selected because the Special Jurors of County Dublin are hostile in politics, and in the 
majority of cases, in race, to the mass of the Irish people. A conviction could, the English 
Law Officers in Ireland believed, be more easily secured there than anvwhere else in Ire- 
land. On April 22nd, 1920, the trial of Madden before this Jury began. On April 23rd, 

1920, the case concluded. From the list of Special Jurors the Crown picked twelve gentle- 
men who were known to be particularly amenable to their direction. The Crown Counsel 
opening his statement laid special stress upon the importance of the evidence of two Crown 
witnesses — Constable Foley, Royal Irish Constabulary, and John Gilligan — and repre- 
sented that in calling these witnesses the Crown was acting in the name of the Irish people 
for the protection of law and order. 

The evidence of Constable Foley was that the night of the murder was a bright m6on- 
light night and that in the two or three seconds before he himself was shot he saw clearly 
John Joseph Madden firing at and killing the sergeant. In cross-examination he said 
there was no doubt whatever that Madden was the man who fired. When he was reminded 
that there could be no moonlight on the night in question, as a new moon two days old 
had set an hovu- before the murder occurred, he still held it was a bright moonlight night. 
In further cross-examination he admitted that he had taken at least eight pints of porter 
before going on patrol. 

John Gilligan swore that he was one of the gang that Madden led out to murder Ser- 
geant Brady. He described the circumstances of the miu-der in full detail. A gun was 
given him. He took his orders from Madden. He saw Madden fire and after the mur- 
der saw him hide the gun in his house. But when cross-examined he admitted that he 
had made previous depositions concerning the murder which were totally at variance with 
the evidence he was now giving. He admitted further that at the time he was preparing 
his evidence he was living at the Headquarters in Dublin of the Royal Irish Constabu- 
lary and had visited Dublin Castle, the Headquarters in Dublin of the English Govern- 
ment. As the cross-examination proceeded he broke down so completely that the Crown 
Counsel threw him overboard and denounced the witness they had previously praised as 
a "degenerate informer." Several reputable witnesses, including a doctor, proved that 
the night of the murder was a particularly dark night, and witnesses of as good standing 
gave evidence that Madden was in his own home at the hour of the murder. The packed 
jury, after 25 minutes' retirement, brought in a verdict of "not guilty," and Madden was 
discharged. 

51 



From the hearing of the case and the verdict, it was clear that not only had Gilligan 
and Constable Foley perjured themselves, but had obviously been coached as to the evi- 
dence they should give, by the Chief Officials at the Depot of the Royal Irish Constabu- 
lary and by Dublin Castle as well. Neither Foley nor Gilligan has been arrested for his 
perjury! 

The London "Daily Herald" in an editorial in its issue of April 26th commenting on 
this trial says: 

"It shows also that there is procurable in Ireland 'evidence' upon which the 
lives and liberties of Sinn Feiners can be sworn away by perjurers, presumably 
for a consideration. And it would seem to be in the interest of someone to see that 
this kind of evidence is provided when required." 

HOW RETALIATION IS PROVOKED. 

Retaliation is provoked by incidents like the murder of James O'Brien of Rathdrum as 
he stood in his doorway watching the unnecessary parading of police through the Fair 
Green of the little town — like the repeated arrest of an old and honored man like Lau- 
rence Ginnell, T.D., even when he was so broken with neurasthenia from previous impris- 
onments that he could neither read nor write — like the absolutely unjustified arrest and 
ill-treatment of Chaplain O'Donnell, an Australian officer who among Australia's 70,000 
soldiers of Irish blood, was one of the most popular and most highly eulogized by his own 
government for his services in raising men and money for the war. 

The storm raised in Australia and England by the Chaplain's ill-treatment soon secured 
his release and an official censure for those responsible. But there was no rebuke or re- 
dress in the case of the military who persecuted — 

"... a man 'on the run,' a phrase which has a special significance in Ireland, 
who ventured to return to his home because his wife was ill and his child dying 
of convulsions. 

"The first day he was back the military visited the house to arrest him. He 
pointed out to the officer in charge of the raiding party that there was no one in 
the house but himself, his sick wife and his dying child. The officer replied that 
he did not care and that the husband was going out with him. The conversation 
took place in the bedroom, and the man was taken out by force in spite of his 
protestations. 

"At six o'clock in the morning the mother found the child was nearly dead. 
She got up with her child and crawled a distance of about a mile and a half to 
her own people. She fainted twice on the way and at half past seven was dis- 
covered in a state of collapse on her parents' doorstep. The child was dead, and 
it is doubtful whether its mother will recover." 

IRISH GIRLS ASSAULTED BY SOLDIERS. 

Nor is there any redress for crimes — not of a political nature — by British police or sol- 
diers in Ireland, when as on March 3 two soldiers attempted to assassinate two young 
girls returning from the movies at 9.30 one night. The girls, fighting desperately for their 
honour, were so battered and bruised about face and body before help came that the sur- 
geons did not know if they would recover. 

In view of the facts reproduced here, it is not remarkable then that when young Irishmen 
went out on Easter Monday to destroy the barracks of the British Constabulary in Ireland, 
their action was greeted with applause by every man the world over in whom Gaelic blood 
still runs pure. Their quietly determined action left the police unharmed, but they de- 
stroyed over 200 of the miniature British fortresses in which the police dwell. 

"With bomb and torch," a Chicago editor commented, "they cleared many a 
pleasant countryside of those sinister excrescences, which, with the union poor- 
houses, form the chief monuments of British misrule in Ireland. As the result 
of that Easter Monday strategy many an armored barrack that sent forth its black 
uniformed quota to protect the crowbar brigade in the old rackrenting and evict- 
ing days now lies a blackened ruin, open to the rejoicing Irish winds — and there 
shall the donkey stable and the robins nest." 
What American will not agree with the Scottish Jurist, Sir Robert Reid, afterwards 
Lord Chancellor, who stated of one of the exposures of police rule in Ireland? — 

"I do not think a blacker instance could be produced from the later history of 
despotic governments in Europe to show the frightful danger of having a police 
force free from any public control." 

32 



CRIMES ATTRIBUTED TO AMERICAN PATRIOTS. 

The world had not communication by cables in 1776, and the area of influence of the 
English press was limited, but wherever it went it carried charges of the lawlessness and 
criminality of the Colonists. Lord Dunmore, Governor of Virginia (1) "planted guns 
around his palace to 'defend himself," and later fled with his family, claiming that they 
were about to be murdered. 

The "discovery of diabolical plots" (2) — smuggling or seizure of ammunition (3) — 
cattle-driving (4) and murder of Colonists friendly to England (5) were identical with 
English despatches about Ireland and Irishmen to-day; while the proclamation of "a 
certain PATRICK HENRY of the County of Hanover and a number of deluded followers 
. . . exciting the people to join in these outrages and rebellious practices, to the great 
terror of His Majesty's subjects and in defiance of the law and government" (6) is almost 
identical with the charges in Lord French's proclamations of Irishmen in 1920. 

There is no difference between the "Crimes Attributed to vSinn Fein" and those attributed 
to the Colonists of Washington's day. 



(1) London 


Daily Advertiser, 


July 11, 1775. 


(2) 




July 19, 1775. 


(3) 


" 


July 4 and 11, 1775 and January 8, 1776 


(4) 




July 7. 1775. 


(5) 




August 7, 1775. 


id) 


" " 


July 6, 1775. 



53 



VI. 

1916 AND 1920. 

If, as Byron exclaimed, "Freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell"^ — then Freedom lay 
prone in a swoon as of death when the men of 1916 fell before Maxwell's buUets, and their 
bodies by his orders were flung into pits of quicklime. 

PEARSE — CLARKE — CONNOLLY — MACDERMOTT — KENT — PLUNKETT 
— MACDONAGH— and the rest of that band of lofty souls; THE O'RAHILLY falling 
dead on the streets of Dublin; these the Irish people have definitely enrolled among their 
national heroes. 

But there were other murders than those of the leaders in 1916 that rest upon the soul 
of England. Not aU of these were even killed in the heat of battle, and so it is that to 
understand the enormity of the outrages in North King Street, Dublin, and other deaths 
of civilians by English bullets, it is perhaps necessary to know the character of the Irish 
"rebels" and how they fought. 

This, too, we shall learn from the lips of Englishmen: 

1. Sir Francis Vane, second in command of the British forces employed to crush the 
rising, stated publicly later and the statement was repeatedly published, that while as a 
veteran of the British army he had fought in many parts of the world, he had not believed 
it possible, until he looked on those young Irish rebels, that men could fight so cleanly , 
so chivalrously. He subsequently lost his status in the British army for openly claiming 
that the rebels were justified in fighting for their country — and that following their rebel- 
lion the Sinn Fein political policy was the only policy for a self-respecting Ireland. 

2. Captain Robert Barton, a wealthy Protestant landowner of Wicklow, who was 
a volunteer British officer aiding to crush the Rising was so impressed with the high charac- 
ter and arguments of the men he fought and later supervised as prisoners — that he joined 
the ranks of the Irish Republican Party as soon as possible. He is now a member of the 
Irish Congress and in jail under a long sentence. 

"THEY FOUGHT LIKE GENTLEMEN." 

3. — Captain R. K. Bereton, who was with ten other English prisoners held by the Irish 
for several days, stated on May 14, 1916: 

"What impressed me most was the international tone adopted by the Sinn Fein 
officers. They were not out for massacre, for burning or for loot. They were out 
for war, observing all the rules of warfare and fighting clean. So far as I saw they 
fought like gentlemen. They had possession of the restaurant in the (Four) 
Courts, stocked with spirits and champagne and other wines, yet there were no 
signs of drinking. I was informed that they were all total abstainers. They 
treated their prisoners with the utmost courtesy and consideration, in fact 
they proved by their conduct that they were men of education, incapable of 
acts of brutality." 

Hon. Herbert H. Asquith, Prime Minister of England, stated in the House of Commons, 
May 11, 1916: 

"So far as the great body of insurgents are concerned, I have no hesitation in 
saying in public they conducted themselves with a humanity which contrasted 
very much to their advantage with some of the so-called civilized enemies which 
we are fighting in Europe. That admission I gladly make. They fought very 
bravely and did not resort to outrage." 

The correspondent of the London Times declared: 

"Civilians, whether they were English or Irish, were not interfered with by the 
Sinn Feiners." 

Heywood in the Daily Chronicle of London: 

"The Sinn Feiners treated their prisoners with every courtesy and respect." 

54 



POGROM ON NORTH KING STREET. 

Fifteen absolutely unoffending non-combatants were massacred in the vicinity of North 
King Street, DubUn, between Friday 6 P. M. and Saturday 10 P. M. of Easter week by 
the 2nd Company, 6th South Staffords Regiment of the British Army under the command 
of Lt. Col. H. Taylor. None of the victims had any connection whatever with the insur- 
rection; some of them had opposed it. None of the murders was done during a sudden 
attack or in the heat of passion. They were most brutally cold-blooded. 

The ill-fated victims were arbitrarily torn from their families, without a moment's respite 
or warning. The houses in which they were taken were never at any time occupied by 
the Irish Volunteers, and no traces of arms or munitions were found on the premises. 

Mention of these miUtary murders was purposely held back in the British House of 
Commons, and repeated attempts to have a public enquiry into them were always balked 
by the British Government. 

STORY OF ONE MURDER. 

From the statement of Anne Fennel, a lodger in the house 174, North King Street 
where George Ennis and Michael Noonan were killed: 

". . . It was between 5 and 6 a. m. on Easter Saturday morning the mili- 
tary burst into the shop. There were one or more officers in command and about 
30 soldiers. They burst in like wild beasts and shouted harshly at us. We 
four were in the back parlor behind the shop. ... As poor Mrs. Ennis saw her 
husband being led tipstairs she clung to him and refused to be parted from him 
and said: T must go with my husband.' One of the soldiers pulled her off and 
put a bayonet to her ear uttering the foulest language. She said, "You would 

not kill a woman, would you?' He shouted, 'Keep quiet, you b— — - b .' 

They then took the two men upstairs and left us women in the shop and told us 
not to move at peril of our lives." (The two frightened women heard the soldiers 
searching the house.) 

"After a long time, it must have been ... we heard a noise at the parlor door, 
and to our horror poor Mr. Ennis crawled in. I will never forget. He was dying, 
bleeding to death, and when the military left the house he had crept down the 
stairs, to see his wife for the last time. He was covered with blood and his eyes 
were rolling in his head. 

"He said to his wife: 'Oh Kate, they have killed me!' She said, 'My God, 
for what?' He said, 'For nothing' ... I was terrified and asked the dying man 
— 'Would they kill us aU?' He spoke very kindly to us and told us they would 
not touch us . . . He said, 'They killed poor Noonan, too.' . . . Poor Mr. 
Ennis did not live more than twenty minutes after he came in to us." 

MURDER OF AMERICAN CITIZEN. 

From statement by the mother of Peter Lawless: 

"My son, Peter Lawless, was 21 years of age and was born in New York, and 
was consequently a citizen of the United States. During Easter week I occupied 
the house No. 27 North King Street, known as the South Dairy. 

"The militarj- came to our house between 8 and 9 on Saturday morning. At 
that time they must have already slaughtered the nine poor people in the houses 
opposite. . . . We had been sitting on the stairs for safety. During the night 
and when the firing seemed to have ceased we went upstairs, thinking of going 
to bed. . . . Just then we heard a great hammering and knocking at the door 
and the soldiers shouting outside. Soon a bayonet was thrust through the panel 
of the hall door. I heard my son below opening the door, which was followed 
by the inrush of soldiers. I heard my son .saying, 'Mother, you all go up stairs 
to the top room; these men are only doing their duty. You need not be fright- 
ened.' The four men were then driven up after us. . . . The soldiers then lined 
us all around the room with hands up. 

■'I asked them, 'What are we here for? What have we done?' The man in 
charge replied, 'We must take these men prisoners.' I said, 'Where are you 
going to take them?' 'To the nearest barracks, I suppose,' he replied. Some 
one then said, 'That is all right; the police will tell you who we are.' . . . We 
women who were in great terror were then ordered out in charge of some soldiers. 
As I passed out, my poor son, who stood near the door, came to the landing to 
try and reassure me and said, 'Mother, it will be all right. You go to Britain 
Street. I'll find j'^ou there.' 

55 



"The soldiers then brought us down. ... In the evening I returned to our 
house accompanied by a soldier. A sentry was on guard at my door and . . . said, 
'You can't go in there! There are four dead men in there.' Terrified, I said, 
'Four dead men! Are they soldiers or Volunteers?' . . . 'Neither; civilians.' 
... 'I left four men there, and I'm going in to see. If you shot them, you may 
shoot me, too.' I shoved past him on to the top landing. 

"And then a scene of horror. . . . My son lay dead in the same spot I had left 
him. . . . his body half in and half out the doorway. Poor Mr. McCarthy lay 
dead against the wall in a sitting position. Their brains had bespattered the 
curtain. Poor Finnigan . . . had fallen dead across the bed. Patrick Hoey 
. . . must have received fearful treatment as his head was burst open and macer- 
ated. . . . 

"I was overcome with horror!" 

"OH, DON'T KILL FATHER!" 

The statements of the wives and mothers of the other victims are equally pathetic. 
Few could hear unmoved the story of the horror at No. 170, where the boy, Chris. Rickey, 
his father and Peter Connolly were slaughtered. The lad had obeyed the soldiers' various 
orders without a murmur, until the three were lined up to be shot. Then the old servant 
lying in terror on the floor of the room without, heard the devoted boy's voice raised in 
piercing supplication: "Oh, don't kill father!" 

The mother, who had gone out for food before the military entered and whose return 
was delayed by heavy firing in the street, said in her statement: 

"... When I rushed into the room, there I saw my poor angel, my darling 
son. He was tying on the ground, his face darkened, and his two hands raised 
above his head as if in silent supplication. I kissed him and put his little cap 
under his head and settled his hands for death. 

"Then I turned and in another place close by I saw poor Tom, lying on the 
ground. 'O Jesus!' I cried, 'my husband, tool' — and not far ofT lay the corpse 
of poor Connolly. 

"I reeled round, and remember no more. . . ." 

THE BATTLE OF MOUNTJOY. 

The patriotic fires of 1916 are still alive in Ireland: the contest begun then has never 
relaxed. It varies in strategy, but never in aim — as the spirited little land of 4,300,000 
withstands the efforts of an Empire to throw it back into political slavery'. 

Another milestone in this contest on the way to Ireland's freedom was the Hunger- 
Strike undertaken on Easter Monday, 1920, by 104 Irish men and boys in Mountjoy 
Jail. As stated editorially by Old Ireland, April 24, 1920, of these prisoners: 

"... They were not a picked phalanx, but a scratch crew selected on the 
'hand-in-a-hat' principle which seems to govern the Castle, gathered together 
from all over Ireland and of all conditions and of all ages. One thing they had 
in common, their Republicanism, their courage never to submit or yield, their 
obstinate adhesion to a principle. There was hardly a well-known Sinn Fein 
leader among them. There was no concerted plan of action. They did not 
provoke the battle, but they won it. England provoked it and lost it. Even 
when within a few hours of death, their resolution never faltered ..." 
The strike was the usual one of protest against imprisonment and treatment as crim- 
inals. As it advanced crowds of sympathizers surrounded the Jail day and night, in 
rain or sun. The English troops then came with tanks, armored cars, barbed wire, aero- 
planes and searchlights. As the second week of fasting began and the prisoners grew grad- 
ually weaker, the sympathy of tens of thousands outside with their suffering brethren 
within grew to passion and at times to threats of violence, which were only dispelled by 
a woman leading all in vocal prayer. 

The prisoners' ages ranged from fifteen to forty-five years. They came from every 
province in Ireland, from north and south. Like thousands of others since 1916, they 
were seized without warning and held without charge. When they began their fast they 
were warned by the British Government they must "Surrender or die!" 

" 'Death,' answered ... all of the hundred and four men and boys . . . for a 
principle that was to them as sacred and immutable as their faith in God, and dearer 
than their earthly lives. ... In the end the British Government was forced to 

56 



realize how impotent was brute materialism, with all its bayonets and guns 
and tanks and aeroplanes, in conflict with dauntless souls . . . and with very bad 
grace and just in time to save itself from a verdict of wilful murder, it surren- 
dered." 

Old Ireland, April 24, 1920 . 

After their removal to the hospital, one of their number, Francis Gleason, died — too 
weakened to sustain an operation that became necessary. 

LAUGHTER;G0NE;FR0M IRELAND. 

Lord Curzon in a public address in 1918 claimed that the English were "the knights- 
errant of civilization" in this age, fighting for weaker nations the world over. Yet with 
an English army of occupation in Ireland against the will of the Irish people, an Ameri- 
can officer returning to New York last January reported to the press: 

"Ireland is a land of whispers. . . . Laughter is gone from it. Even the smiles 
are ghastly. People walk with a brooding terror over them!" 

"ENGLAND SHOULD KISS THE HEM OF IRELAND'S GARMENT." 

Is there anyone who still fails to get a right perspective of the Irish struggle? Is there 
anyone who could not read the agony in the thoughts of the young Irish country lads 
fighting under the British flag in France that Easter Week "to rid the world of oppression 
... to shield small nations"? Is there anyone who can withhold an exclamation of amazed 
admiration with Chesterton — that there could be found in Ireland any men who "... 
marched out under the flag of their own oppressor to fight to give other nations a liberty 
that was denied to their own?" Who would not exclaim with him, too — that "England 
should kiss the hem of Ireland's garment for her wonderful magnanimity . . . !" 

And who to-day will dare to breathe a word of censure upon those patriots of Ireland, 
more comprehendingly alert for the needs of Ireland itself, more conscious of the national 
extinction that lay in belief in England's promises — and who fought for Liberty at home 
first? 

These are some of the British outrages in the Ireland of to-day. To men and women 
of Irish blood they are but sharp echoes of others even more terrible that are past, but 
which still live in the blood of the race that in every generation since 1172 has known the 
bayonet, the bullet, and the crowbar. 

IRELAND'S AGONY CARVED DEEP. 

And so it was that the poet soul of Walt Whitman, who had never seen Ireland, could 
yet plumb her grief in the lines of agony carved indestructibly in the souls of her children 
— her Lewises and Moylans and Carrolls, her Jacksons and Clebumes and Mitchels — and 
proclaim her — 

"Of all the earth most full of sorrow, 
Because most full of love." 
But her Day has come. 

A new generation of patriot sons, proudly determined, heroic and fearless as any who 
have gone before, has risen beside her home-hearth and hold her fortunes in fee there. 

And already there are men in England who cry with enlarged souls: "Our Shame in 
Ireland — How Long?" 

While from every corner of God's earth into which the Irish race or the spirit of Liberty 
has penetrated, firm voices are lifted with those who guard her hearth, crying, as Whit- 
man once did, to her — 

"Yet a word, ancient mother; 

You need crouch there no longer 
On the cold ground, with forehead 
Between your knees ; 
Oh, you need not sit there ..." 

No, she need not longer, for we are going to lift her up — let Empires and Chancellories 
croak as they may — and we are going to place upon her dear sorrowbent head a Crown. 
It will be the Crown of a free people's love — the Crown of a God-anointed Democracy. 



57 



VII. 



AMERICA'S INTEREST IN THIS. 

"The question for America now is simply this — which will it recognize as the 
official organ of the Irish Nation, the alien government of Might or the native 
government of Right? The one has no sanction but that of brute force; the other 
has the supreme democratic and moral sanction of the consent of the governed. 

"Can Americans hesitate in deciding what; it shall be? 

Will America's place not be to-day also on the side of free institutions?" 

President de Valera, April 7, 1920. 

America is to-day intervening in the contest between the Irish Nation and the English. 
Officially supporting in Ireland an alien government of Might. In History the American 
people will be held responsible for this. The facts to-day are: 



The American administration is offi- 
cially recognizing the Government of 
Might superimposed by the military 
force of England upon the Irish people 
and the Irish Congress elected by them 
in December, 1918. 



The American administration is about 
to receive Sir Auckland Geddes as the 
Ambassador of Great Britain and 
Ireland, notwithstanding the fact that 
the Irish people and theii* lawfully-con- 
stituted government repudiate his pre- 
tensions to Ambassadorship for Ireland. 



Both Houses of Congress have passed 
resolutions which are tantamount to 
acknowledging Ireland's right now to 
the Independence she has declared — 
(For a complete acknowledgment of 
this Independence the recognition of 
the President of the United States is 
required.) 

The overwhelming majority of the 
American people desire the freedom 
of Ireland — the recognition of the inde- 
pendent republican form of Government 
already established by the Irish people. 
Lieut. -Governor McDowell of Montana 
aptly expressed this fact in his state- 
ment — 

"If the question of Irish Independence 
were left to a plebiscite of the American 
people, Ireland would be free in the 
morning." 

It is beyond question that the recognition of the Irish Republic by America — the greatest 
and strongest country in the world to-day, the country which was the decisive factor in 
ending the Great War — would promptly lead to recognition by other nations — and so to 
Irish Freedom. 

AMERICA MADE ENGLAND DEBTOR. 

Having displayed all her own resoiu-ces and drawn upon all the might of her Imperial 
resources — with France and Italy and Japan aiding her — England found herself in March 
1918 driven to the wall by Germany. ("Our backs are against the wall." — Haig.) Then 
she sent up a final, terribly urgent call for America's immediate help in her war "against 
militarism and autocratic forces of oppression." 

America responded — and it remains an incontrovertible fact that by this country's 
marvelous outpouring of men, money and munitions, she became the decisive factor in 
winning the world war. 

America had already lent over $4,500,000,000 to England and as much more to her 
Allies. She poured out many other billions and she sent over 2,000,000 of her finest 
sons to the holocaust of war. 

Upon what grounds did the leaders of the American people receive this unprecedented 
offering? 

58 



Upon these grounds: — 

"We . . . fight thus . . . for the rights of nations, great and small, and the 
privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience . . . 
for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in 
their own governments, for the rights and liberty of small nations. . . . " — (Ad- 
dress of President Wilson to Congress, when calling upon that body to vote for 
war and send the young manhood of America into the cockpit of Europe.) 

Again upon these grounds when money was wanted from the people: 

"We have entered this war for an ideal — the right to liberty, happiness, oppor- 
tunity — ^not for ourselves alone, but for all the peoples of all the world." — 

(Extract from circular appeals for Liberty Loan being made in November, 1918.) 
These appeals were made deliberately, for nothing else would have moved to approval 
of the war a nation — the majority of which did not, even in 1917, want to become embroiled 
in a European war. 

Just such appeals Vv'ere made on the direct instructions of the Chief Executive by one 
known to the writer, whom he sent throughout the country to groups of organized labour, 
to reconcile them to America undertaking this war. 

The American hosts went out — and by sea or by land a notably great proportion of 
these were men of Irish blood. They went as chivalrously as the Irishmen who crossed 
the seas after Franklin's call for help in 1771. The Irish soldiers of 1776 braved the for- 
tunes of battle and the lingering death of the prison ship for the liberty of America. The 
American of Irish blood returning over the seas in 1918 believed he fought for Ireland's 
freedom — in fighting, as the President and Congress had decided, "for the rights and 
lil:)erty of small nations." 

ENGLAND'S INTERPRETATION OF AMERICAN AIMS. 

It is an indisputable fact that England in receiving America's help knew exactly the 
aims and terms (they might be called) upon which the American people came to her aid 
against Germany. 

These extracts from Irish newspapers as reproductions of recruiting advertisements 
published in 1918, by the EngHsh Military authorities confirm their knowledge of America's 
aim s — ideals — terms : 

"America has come into the war — America in whose first assertion of the prin- 
ciple of freedom for herself in the War of Independence Irishmen took a leading 
share ; America in whose great army half a million men of Irish blood are to-day 
enrolled to assert the principle of freedom for the whole world. Before the fifth 
year of the war has passed the armies- of America and the Allies will have won the 
war and established in President Wilson's words the reign of law based upon the 
consent of the governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind." . . . 

"What is the security that the victory of the AUies will mean the rule of justice 
(in Ireland)? The security is the fact that American soldiers are coming to 
France at the rate of 10,000 a day; that President Wilson is the moral leader 
of the Allies and that he has proclaimed as their first war aim after the defeat of 
Germany 'the settlement of every question whether of territory or sovereignty, 
of economic arrangement or, of political relationship upon the basis of the free 
acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned and not upon 
the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which 
may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or 
mastery.' " 

"The Tenth (Irish) Division followed in the footsteps of the Crusaders and 
fought in the same cause — the cause of the Cross, in the eternal struggle between 
liberty and tj^ranny. It fought that cause far from Ireland; but that cause is no 
less Ireland's cause. The Tenth Division fought for the liberation of the small 
nations oppressed by Germany and her Allies; but it fought also for Ireland's 
place in a world of freedom — the world of freedom in which all the resources of 
America are pledged to establish 'the right of law based upon the consent of the 
governed and sustained by the organized opinion of mankind.' " 

Read in the light of subsequent happenings the cynicism and falsity of these official 
British declarations are diabolical. 

59 



What did Bonar Law mean speaking in the British House of Commons on the 19th 
of April, 1917, when he said, 

"America's Aims and ideals are those of the AUies." 

There are a few protagonists of Britain in this country-, who refer feelingly to England 
as "our gallant ally in the late war." Can their "gallant" ally afford to loose her gallantry 
now? Can she hope, directing international settlements and adjustments — can she 
hope now in her own lawlessness to be held beyond the Law? 

ENGLAND'S VIOLATION OF HER OWN AND AMERICA'S TERMS. 

The war is ended. 

Poland, Bohemia, Finland, Armenia, Georgia and other small nations are freed, but 
British statesmen now say that they never intended the principle of Self - Determination 
to be applied within the Empire. 

Ireland remains to-day subjected to a militarist Terrorism, conceded by Englishmen to 
be more frightful than anything imposed on her since the indescribable horrors, half- 
hangings and floggings of 1798.* 

An apologist for English interference in Ireland — the British Unionist organ, the "Irish 
Times" — was on Feb. 23, 1920 reduced to this argument to justify it: 

"The present government is unpopular with a majority of Irishmen. Let us 
go fvirther and assume for the sake of argument that it is an arbitrary government 
which consistently abuses its power. At the worst, however, it is not nearly so ar- 
bitrary as was the Roman Government to which Christ and St. Paul rendered strict 
obedience." 

Was it to support in a Twentieth-Century World a government no better than that 
of pagan Rome over alien-territories that American boys suffered and died in France? 

What did Lloyd George mean by his solemn professions of 1917? — 

"America's ideals are our ideals" — and "We are in the war for no selfish ends. 
We are in it to recover freedom for the Nations which have been so brutally 
attacked. . . . The world is a world for the weak as for the strong." 

WEAKNESS OF FONDLING BRITISH LION. 

On Feb. 23, 1920 Winston Churchill stated in the English House of Commons that the 
British military in Ireland erred on the side of weakness. This table, like that given 
earlier (p. 10) compiled from court and censored press reports, indicates the nature of their 
"weakness": — 

"Weekending Feb. 7 Feb. 14 Feb. 21 , Feb. 28 Total 

Murders 

Raids 

Arrests 

Sentences 

Proclamations & Suppressions 

Courts-Martial 

Armed assaults 

Deportations 

Total for February, 1920 4,801 

If the British Lion in his weakness is only fondling Ireland, is it not as true to-day — 
"... the Lion fondles ere it kills?" 



2 


1 






3 


469 


1199 


1255 


1197 


4120 


122 


252 


59 


90 


523 


13 


7 


2 


8 


30 


2 


3 


6 


9 


20 


2 


1 


6 


1 


10 


2 


6 


8 


6 


22 


— 


63 


2 


8 


73 



♦"THREE YEARS' JAILINGS IN IRELAND: ENGLISH GOVERNMENT REFUSES FIG- 
URES: — In the English House of Commons, Capt. W. Benn asked the Chief Secretary for Ireland how many 
persons were convicted in Ireland during the past year under the Crimes Act or the Defense of the Realm 
Act, and the nature of the sentences. Lord Henry Cavendish Bentinck asked how many persons in Ireland 
in the last three years had been tried by a single resident magistrate: whether this procedure was adopted 
because of the large percentage of cases dismissed by the magistrates in Petty Sessions; how many persons 
were now in prison for political or seditious offenses; how many of these were sentenced by courts-martial. 
Civil Courts or Crimes Court, and the nature of the offenses. 

"Mr. MacPherson replying said that the investigation necessary to give answers to the questions would 
impose so great an amount of work on the already over-burdened police in Ireland that he could not ask them 
to bear the additional burden." — (See Hansard, Nov. 13, Col. 239.) 

60 



SPONTANEOUS AMERICAN PROTEST. 

The spirit of true Americanism throbbed in this protest made by some indignant reader 
of the Pittsburg Dispatch in the autumn of 1919: 

"The telegraphic news printed in large type on the front page of this morning's 
Dispatch is the climax; it is the last straw. Here it is: 'CRUSHING IRISH 
REPUBLIC. PARLIAMENT IS SUPPRESSED. SOLDIERS RAID SINN 
FEINERS OVER IRELAND. CLUBS AND HOMES vSEARCHED. MANY 
PRISONERS CAPTURED, ETC Great God! Is this what we are getting 
as a result of the four years' war that was fought for 'the rights of small nations; 
that the world might be made safe for democracy?' Have we fought and con- 
quered one tyrant, one enemy of liberty, only to strengthen and more firmly en- 
trench another? Are we, who have saved England from being made a German 
province, to stand by and calmly witness this act of oppression, this act of Medi- 
eval feudalism and barbarism, without making a protest?" 

Notwithstanding the facts set out here from British Court records, the British Am- 
bassador Geddes could make the ridiculous claim that "this generation of Englishmen 
has steadfastly refused to quarrel with Ireland," and lAayd George, at the close of the 
San Remo conference this spring, sent a message to Britain's womanhood that — 

"Militarism with its horrors and dangers is to be kept under wherever it threat- 
ens the peace of the world." 

Was there not a note of limitation in that speech — of militarism to be permitted to 
flourish in lands forcibly held by Britain, and condemned only in her rival powers? 

It is evident that the moral vision of British statesmen is altogether obscured with 
regard to Ireland. They have to be roused to their duty and to the moral obligations 
they incurred, when they secured the aid of American men and money to save their forces 
from defeat. 

But the American Government must for its own honour and the maintenance of Amer- 
ica's reputation in history, fulfil the moral obligations it incurred in calling out its man- 
hood to fight in the name of Liberty for nations great and small as it did in April, 1917. 

HISTORY WILL HOLD AMERICA RESPONSIBLE. 

In the last analysis — failing action in the Chief Executive who solemnly pledged his 
country's honor to these ideals on April 3, 1917 — it is for the American people to urge 
the fulfilment of his and their moral obligations as Americans, their unfulfilled obligations 
to the dead American soldiers in France. 

This they can only do by compelling the recognition of governments lawfully selected 
by majorities in nations demanding their liberty. This the primal law of gratitude must 
impel them to do, especially in the case of Ireland — America's first Ally, the country to 
which Martha Washington's son* returned thanks more than once: 

"Let me say: When you felt the full force of the Lion's merciless fangs, who 
firstgaveyouaid,notof words, but of deeds? . . . When our friendless standard was 
first unfurled for resistance, who were the strangers that first mustered 'round its 
staff, and when it reeled in the fight, who more bravely sustained it^than Erin's 
generous sons?" 

And again: 

"Eternal gratitude to Irishmen!" 
Voicing this "eternal gratitude" and with it unalterable American ideals of the Liberty 
of Man — the will of the American people should rise like a visible exhalation and loom over 
the White House like the shadowy presence of Washington himself, bidding his successor 
to do what he, the Father of his Country, would so gladly have done— sign the document 
that would end British outrages in Ireland and make Ireland free ! 

In history it will be said to be as true of the American people to-day as it has been of 
the English people, since Gladstone declared to them on Oct. 2, 1891 — this: 

"Millions of you by your votes determine the course which the Imperial policy 
is to follow, and with that power you must accept the duties and responsibilities 
which belong to it. If Ireland is oppressed hereafter it will be oppressed by you. 

• In address at Washington City Hall, 1826. 

61 



A WARNING FROM MT. VERNON. 

Viewed in relation to the sombre facts presented in this book, there comes hke a voice 
from the grave a solemn utterance immediately apphcable to America and Americans 
to-day. It was that made by George Washington Parke Custis on July 20, 1826, in the 
City Hall at Washington. Having told what Irishmen endured in America's day of 
struggle in "the privations of the camp, the fate of battle and the horrors of the prison- 
ship," Custis demanded: 

"And with such revelations as these, can you, will you, dare you, Americans, 
talk of interference, and withhold your voice from a general acclaim, which would 
thunder in this land till its echoes reach the Emerald Isle, in a prayer for her 
deliverance. If there is an American who does not feel for the wrongs of that 
country which so nobly contributed to the estabHshment of our rights, I pro- 
nounce him recreant to the feelings of virtue, honor and gratitude. 

"And my country's self, if she decline to give only her poor opinions of the mis- 
eries of those who gave their toil and blood that she might be great, free and happy, 
when misfortunes next assail her, may she not find the friend she once found in 
Ireland." 

This last is a harsh invocation from the "Child of Mt. Vemon." Yet it is but the meas- 
ure of what he learned from the great Washington himself, to be America's debt to 
Ireland. 



62 



Sppenbix. 



There has been placed at the disposal of the Department of State at Washington the 
affidavits and data concerning English atrocities in Ireland, referred to in these sections 
of the Reply of the Chairman, American Commission on Irish Independence, to Ian Mac- 
Pherson, British Chief-Secretary in Ireland, reaffirming the Commission's Report of 
British atrocities in Ireland and its demand for an impartial Committee of Investigation 
composed of men who were not citizens of either Great Britain or Ireland: 

VICTIMS RENDERED INSANE. 

"We will produce the records of the jails and insane asylums, as well as the 
victims who have recovered, and the relatives of those who have not, to prove 
our charges that numbers of Irish Republicans were rendered insane by their 
treatment." 

DEAD, WOUNDED AND DISABLED. 

"We will produce a list of the dead, those who were permanently maimed and 
disfigured by the atrocities practised upon them ; also a list of those whose health 
has been shattered and who have been rendered incurable invalids by their treat- 
ment, all accompanied by names and dates." 

MacPherson, who had categorically denied the charge of atrocities in a statement which 
even the London Times conceded to be halting and evasive, did not call an investigation 
nor examine the data compiled by the Commission. 

After MacPherson's denial the Irish Government proceeded to secure affidavits from 
the victims in order to substantiate, all the material charges made. When this became 
known British forces broke into the Headquarters of the Government and raided it thor- 
oughly but did not secure the documents sought. The publication of letters and state- 
ments by the victims was then prohibited by the British censor in all Irish papers. Not- 
withstanding the various efforts made to suppress the facts the banned documents reached 
the United St(ites. 



63 



NOW READY... 



THE ESCAPE FROM MOUNTJOY^^ 



AND OTHER PRISON EXPERIENCES 
OF AN IRISH VOLUNTEER 



PADRAIC FLEMING 

(CONVICT E. 445) 



Written by 

THE RECTOR OF AN IRISH COLLEGE 



FOREWORD BY PIARAS BEASLAI, T. D, 



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Lloyd George, speaking in the British 
Parliament on March 7, 1917, stated: 

"Centuries of brutal and often ruthless in- 
justice, and what is worse . . . centuries of in- 
solence and insult have driven hatred of British 
rule into the very marrow of the Irish race. 
The long records of oppression, proscription and 
expatriation have formed the greatest blot on 
the British fame of equity and eminence in the 
realm of government. There remains . . . the 
invincible fact that to-day she (Ireland) is no 
more reconciled to British rule than she was in 
the days of Cr<nnwell." 



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